Politics: A new beginning

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by bilmore
Then let me mention that I suspect the law was written to make a difference in the thousands and thousands of other cases that are slightly more "normal" (you know, the dead babies 'cuz someone was inconvenienced)...

Then I am confused by the juxtaposition of your point and Not Me's. If, as Not Me says, there aren't any doctors doing D&Es, how are there thousands and thousands of dead babies produced because someone was inconvenienced? If mothers facing medical emergencies can't get these because of the lack of providers, who's doing the thousands and thousands of elective D&Es?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Likewise, I was agreeing with you. We were agreeing together.



Yes. Inter alia.

Holy jump to conclusions. Isn't this a situation where there is simply severe spike in demand which no one could have predicted? From what I understand, 80 million doses are produced each year for US consumption and that has been sufficient in all past years. Are you (that is, you and Not Me) suggesting that the government subsidize so that the ratio is 1 dose/citizen? And as a public policy matter, is it necessary for everybody to be innoculated in order to ensure there is not a widespread epidemic?

[edited to change NFH to Not Me. My apoligies]

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Sexual Harassment Panda
Then I am confused by the juxtaposition of your point and Not Me's. If, as Not Me says, there aren't any doctors doing D&Es, how are there thousands and thousands of dead babies produced because someone was inconvenienced? If mothers facing medical emergencies can't get these because of the lack of providers, who's doing the thousands and thousands of elective D&Es?

The confusion can be cleared up if you read Bilmore's post as applying to the Minnesota law and to abortions in general -- not only to abortions by dilation and extraction alone. Not Me's point referred to the blogger's complaint that the nearest doctor available to do a third trimester abortion on her anecephalic fetus would have been three states away.

S_A_M

[sgtclub]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20031210/D7VBJPD00.html

[S. Ct. upholds key provisions on soft money and ad restrictions]

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
The confusion can be cleared up if you read Bilmore's post as applying to the Minnesota law and to abortions in general -- not only to abortions by dilation and extraction alone. Not Me's point referred to the blogger's complaint that the nearest doctor available to do a third trimester abortion on her anecephalic fetus would have been three states away.

S_A_M

Ah, yes. Thank you. Had I only been more awake. Or this teleconference not so boring.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Holy jump to conclusions. Isn't this a situation where there is simply severe spike in demand which no one could have predicted?

No. The demand varies from year to year. That can be predicted. Last year, the companies made something like 96 million doses, and were left with 13 million doses. This year, they only made 83 million, but the flu strain is worse. Children have been dying in Colorado, and it's early.

Are you suggesting that the government subsidize so that the ratio is 1 dose/citizen?

Some government subsidy seems like a good idea, but with 300 million people in the country -- from a health perspective, it's a good idea not to restrict innoculation to citizens -- you could get well north of 83 million without getting everyone.

And as a public policy matter, is it necessary for everybody to be innoculated in order to ensure there is not a widespread epidemic?

Certainly not. There was no epidemic last year. But a lot depends on things we don't know or control poorly.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
No. The demand varies from year to year. That can be predicted. Last year, the companies made something like 96 million doses, and were left with 13 million doses. This year, they only made 83 million, but the flu strain is worse. Children have been dying in Colorado, and it's early.

The problem with the 'flu vaccine is that it's generally guesswork, since the vaccine needs to go into production six months ahead of 'flu season, no one knows how bad the 'flu is going to be from year to year or which strains are going to be prevalent the next year.

Certainly public health officials and pharma companies can use data to guess, based on a variety of factors how much drug to make and how to construct it. But because of the lead time necessary to produce the drug, development is entirely based on extrapolation from the year before and observation of environmental factors. Many years the vaccine is realtively useless because the strain that does dominate wasn't included in the vaccine. Increased R&D, etc would be useful to develop methods of producing the vaccines more quickly, so some of the guesswork could be removed from the process and so back up vaccines could be developed in a particularly bad season.

The people who really need the vaccine are the elderly, the very young and health care workers. We do not need to vaccinate the entire country, so producing 200 plus million doses to cover everyone would never be necessary. The public health system comes into play in getting the vaccine to these populations, who often are dependent on others for transportation and communication with the health care system. There is a government subsidy for the program. Medicare pays a good portion for the 'flu vaccine. Most health care institutions will subsidize the costs of the vaccine for their own workers. Medicaid will help pay for the kids vaccines.

On a somewhat related note, I'm pissed off as hell at both Tom Scully and Tommy Thompson. Scully announced about a week ago that he's leaving his position as head of CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, formerly HCFA, Health Care Financing Administration) as of December 15 to join a law firm or investment bank. Thomspon, head of DHHS says today that if Bush wins in '04, he won't be back with the new administration. It irritates me no end that these are the two positions who will be in charge of implementing and writing regulations for the drug benefit bill and these two people were actively lobbying for the bill and neither one of them will commit to seeing the implementation through.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by bilmore
Then let me mention that I suspect the law was written to make a difference in the thousands and thousands of other cases that are slightly more "normal" (you know, the dead babies 'cuz someone was inconvenienced), and that I bet I can find horrific stories that have resulted from the granting of civil rights and liberties, (Dru, anyone?), or from liberal taxation-of-the-rich-'cuz-they-can-afford-it (remember the american boat industry?) or . . . pretty much any initiative taken for any cause, forever.

When you find those horrific stories, you post them. The pro-lifers promised me no one would be hurt by wait-and-consent laws. Turns out, that's not true. So I posted about it.

I'm pointing out that laws to protect the public mores have vast unintended consequences, especially when the legislature tells a doctor how to do em's job. And one-in-a-thousand-live-births isn't so rare that we shouldn't be disgusted. Minnesota had 68,035 live births last year. That means 68 Minnesotans had to go through this exact same fact pattern so that some legislator could feel smug about saving one or two of the babies who do have brain stems because he made a pregnant woman feel bad and selfish for wanting to do something that --- last time I checked --- remains legal in this country. Glad you think those 68 women are just collateral damage. I think they're illustrative of the wrong-headedness of the policy. BTW, the other women in Minnesota seeking to terminate their pregnancies also have reasons why being told by a doctor that they're inflicting pain upon their children isn't such a nice thing. Maybe you could sit in on those sessions, and suggest that they're having the abortion as a matter of "convenience," rather than forcing doctors to say it on your behalf.

The fact that you would equate this anguish with taxation's effect on the American boat industry says more about you than it does about the issue.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
On a somewhat related note, I'm pissed off as hell at both Tom Scully and Tommy Thompson. Scully announced about a week ago that he's leaving his position as head of CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, formerly HCFA, Health Care Financing Administration) as of December 15 to join a law firm or investment bank. Thomspon, head of DHHS says today that if Bush wins in '04, he won't be back with the new administration. It irritates me no end that these are the two positions who will be in charge of implementing and writing regulations for the drug benefit bill and these two people were actively lobbying for the bill and neither one of them will commit to seeing the implementation through.

Wow. Aside from Thompson and Scully, whose plans I was not aware of, I was already rather put out by the stories that indicated that the GOP and the Dems who crossed over on this bill would be taking credit for this benefit increase during the coming election cycle even though they set a date for its implementation which will not allow us to gauge the bill's effectiveness until '05-'06 or thereafter.

But for some reason this Thompson/Scully tidbit really discourages me. Apparently the deficit is not the only issue in Washington where statements that "we will not pass on our problems to other generations, other presidents, other congresses" are somewhat laughable. And yet it doesn't seem like there is a big groundswell of recognition by the voters of this pattern of behavior by our elected and appointed government officials, in both parties and on all levels of government...

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
When you find those horrific stories, you post them. The pro-lifers promised me no one would be hurt by wait-and-consent laws. Turns out, that's not true. So I posted about it.

I really hesistated on answering this, 'cuz there's no way I'm getting into an abortion debate. But, being a sucker for on-line mutual insults, here I am in a limited capacity (some, of course, raising the point that "limited capacity" is my normal state, but, well . . .):

Having no real concrete dogma in this fight, I look at the relative values of the two sides.

To you, this horrible cost is the emotional turmoil these woman have to go through to reach the birth stage. Yeah, that can be sad.

To the other side, the laws were written because others insist that the right to this "reproductive freedom" (great term) allows them to butcher little kids as they come out.

I think they allege a greater harm than you do. If you want me to post the refuting stories, you're really asking me to post the pictures of kids after late-term abortions, and I ain't gonna do that. So, get off your high horse, and recognize that you can't even enter this dialogue (not with me, but in general) and completely ignore the idea that many people consider this to be murder. If you can't even acknowledge that fact in your rants, there's no point talking.

The fact that you would equate this anguish with taxation's effect on the American boat industry says more about you than it does about the issue.

Really, for you to bring up some sort of intentionally misguiding moral argument at this stage is laughable. You can ignore that so many apperently think that killing a fetus/baby/lump is murder, but then yell this shit? Take a pill.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by bilmore
To you, this horrible cost is the emotional turmoil these woman have to go through to reach the birth stage. Yeah, that can be sad.

To the other side, the laws were written because others insist that the right to this "reproductive freedom" (great term) allows them to butcher little kids as they come out.

I think they allege a greater harm than you do.

Uh, you've lost sight of which Minnesota law we're talking about here. A ban on D/E or D/X or whatever had nothing to do with the wait-and-consent law that wronged this woman. It has to do with lecturing women on the evils of abortion when the fetus inside them is not viable, and they're already heartbroken about that. She merely observed that if her sonogram had happened two weeks later, she'd have to go to Kansas. She'd have gotten the legislature's lecture in either case, even if she was one month pregnant.

So spare me the talk about butchering little kids as they come out. Unless you're willing to sit in a white room and tell the mother of an anencephalic fetus that she's butchering her little kid.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Uh, you've lost sight of which Minnesota law we're talking about here. A ban on D/E or D/X or whatever had nothing to do with the wait-and-consent law that wronged this woman. It has to do with lecturing women on the evils of abortion when the fetus inside them is not viable, and they're already heartbroken about that. She merely observed that if her sonogram had happened two weeks later, she'd have to go to Kansas. She'd have gotten the legislature's lecture in either case, even if she was one month pregnant.

So spare me the talk about butchering little kids as they come out. Unless you're willing to sit in a white room and tell the mother of an anencephalic fetus that she's butchering her little kid.

Maybe Minnesota should amend the statute so that the speech need not be read to prospective parents of anencephalic kids. Or is there some reason why the pro-lifers would disagree?

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Uh, you've lost sight of which Minnesota law we're talking about here.

No, it's just that I truly don't see any substantive difference between all of the various approaches that people are taking in this whole fight. They are just incremental tactical advances or defeats in the "abortion should be banned completely"/"abortion should be no business of the state" fight. Any argument that tries to artifically deal with one such regulation in a vacuum is (usually) intentionally deceptive.

I could send you my notes on the hundred-twenty or so judicial permission cases I sheperded and attended and sometimes advocated at, if you need some sort of "my abortion dick's as big as your abortion dick" reference. I can introduce you to friends who have gone through the live-birth-to death fun, and who seem to be equally split between "it was awful" and "we were so glad we got the chance . . .".

This isn't an issue that's going to be helped, on either side, with anecdotes of emotional pain, because both sides have them, and they usually only tend to show that both sides are concerned with emotional pain that specifically helps them prove their own case. It's fun, and it's maybe personally satisfying in that it gives you a warm feeling when demonizing the other side, but something that ONLY polarizes is probably not useful.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Kevin Drum goes after Arnold:

Is Arnold the most brazen liar in the history of politics, or what? I say this without a lot of malice, since I genuinely sympathize with the almost impossible job he's taken on. But still, enough's enough.

As the LA Times reports today, Arnold was on CNN yesterday and suggested that he might suspend Proposition 98, an initiative that guarantees a certain minimum level of school funding. To anyone who wasn't in California during the campaign it's hard to get across the depth of the deceit this demonstrates. Here was his TV ad on the subject of education:

• Question: Will you have to cut education?
  
  Schwarzenegger: No. We can fix this mess without hurting the schools. For me, children come first. Always have, always will.

I'm telling you, this ad ran a dozen times a night on every station in the state. He said over and over that education wouldn't be touched and that he supported Proposition 98. It was a cornerstone of his campaign. But less than a month after being sworn in he casually proposes gutting Prop 98 and then sends out his chief flack to make weasel noises about what the meaning of "cut" is. It's really unbelievable.

In the same interview, Arnold also backed off his promise to make sure local communities get back the money they lost when he reduced the vehicle license fee. And he's backed off his promise to investigate the groping charges.

This is a joke. He knew perfectly well exactly how bad the state's finances were when he made these promises, and he made them anyway. He knew he couldn't keep these promises without tax increases, and he made them anyway. And everyone believed that he had some magic plan that defied the laws of economics and lined up to vote for him.

And now he's just tossing those promises overboard without so much as an apology. It's revolting.


I haven't been paying close attention, and hope Drum is overreacting.

edited to try to solve the attribution problem

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I haven't been paying close attention, and hope Drum is overreacting.

Just to be clear, you should put in quotation marks. I can't tell which part you're saying, and which part you're quoting.