Abortion coverage MANDATORY in Senate bill exchanges!

Previously posted at our website, Political Integrity Now

Where it is written “subsection A”, note that this is referring to “abortions for which public funding is NOT allowed.” And where it says “subsection B”, it is referring to “abortions for which public funding IS allowed. This begins on page 140 of the 1502 page newly submitted Senate Finance Committee bill.

‘‘(3) ASSURED AVAILABILITY OF VARIED COVERAGE THROUGH EXCHANGES.—
14 ‘‘(A) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary [Kathleen Sebelius] shall sure that with respect to qualified health benefits plans offered in any exchange established pursuant to this title—
18 ‘‘(i) there is at least one such plan that provides coverage of services described in subparagraphs (A) [does not provide abortion coverage] and (B) [does provide abortion coverage] of paragraph (2); [line 20, pg 140]

The current bill mandates an abortion coverage option be available through any qualified health benefits plan in the exchange:

(A) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary shall assure that with respect to qualified health benefits plans offered in any exchange established pursuant to this title—

(i) there is at least one such plan that provides coverage of services described in subparagraphs (A) and (B) of paragraph (2); and

(ii) there is at least one such plan that does not provide coverage of services described in paragraph (2)(A); [line 14, pg 141]

The next bit discusses segregation of funds, and in layman’s terms, this says that even though these entities may be federally funded or get large sums of government money, they have to segregate the funds which pay for (provide) abortions. What does this mean in terms of a family budget? It means a husband and wife both work. He brings home 2,000 per week and she brings home 1,800 per week. If this family budget was going to provide abortions, it would mean that even though their combined salaries benefit their household as a whole, the actual money spent on the abortions will have to come out of the 2,000 that he brings home for that week. So essentially it is the same 3,800 pool of money, but we’re splitting it up to make it sound better. Another way to describe it is if that man goes out and buys a new Corvette without discussing it with his wife. When she freaks out, he says, “Don’t worry honey, I’m going to make the payments out of MY salary, it won’t come from yours at all. See what I’m getting at here? It’s just semantics.

‘‘(c) NO DISCRIMINATION ON THE BASIS OF PROVISION OF ABORTION.—A qualified health benefits plan may not discriminate against any individual health care provider or health care facility because of its willingness or unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.’’ [line 6 pg 144]

This basically means that no plan, even one that was highly against abortion, could not discriminate (i.e. not cover services at facilities that provide abortions–like planned parenthood) against any doctor or health care provider because of their WILLINGNESS to provide or refer for abortions. This feels eerily like something we call a “loophole.” The plan itself may not cover abortions, but the plan cannot refuse to pay for services at…say…an abortion clinic.

Will be updated as time permits. It is however, a 1500 page bill!

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2010: The year of the black Conservative

Allen West is one of a small group of black Republicans who hope to capitalize on the race card controversy being perpetuated by Obama supporters, in 2010.

Previously posted on our website, Political Integrity Now.

As has been reported on Political Integrity Now in the past, accusations of racism based upon political disagreements are not only wrong, but they do a disservice to those who are true victims of racism. PIN hopes that Allen West is on to something. It is a disgrace that so many citizens believe the hype that Democrats have always been a friend to black people.

As reported by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, on www.FoxNews.com.

When former President Jimmy Carter said racism was an underlying factor in attacks on President Obama, it’s safe to say he had no intention of boosting Allen West’s campaign for Congress in Florida’s Broward County.

But according to West, a retired Army colonel who is running for the second time against Democratic Rep. Ron Klein in Florida’s 22nd congressional district, that is exactly what has happened.

“Since (Democrats) have thrown out the race card, it has made me more appealing,” says West, one of a small but determined group of black Republicans running for seats in the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives in 2010.

Eager to overturn the “conventional wisdom” that the GOP is mainly a white bread party that offers few opportunities for minorities, these black Republicans believe they can attract increasingly agitated conservatives, as well as independents, to make 2010 their year.

They also conceded in interviews that the injection of race — a familiar theme since Obama’s election last year — has given them a certain edge and authority when they speak out against the president’s agenda. Because they’re black, they say, they can lead the charge against Democratic policies without being called “racist.” In fact, they say, their skin color may make them more attractive candidates.

“A lot of people who don’t want to be part of Obama’s policies are being called racist,” West said. “Then they say, ‘Hey, this guy, Colonel West — he’s black and I support him.’”

“It’s made me more appealing,” West told FOXNews.com, “because it shows the contrast of our principles — how different we are even though we both have permanent tans.”

Continuing from the Fox story:

The GOP still calls itself the “Party of Lincoln” because of its historical ties to the abolition of American slavery, and blacks remained loyal to the party after Reconstruction as Southern Democrats established segregationist Jim Crow laws. But the scene began to shift during the Depression, as blacks voted in large numbers for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal policies.

The Democrats cemented their lock on black voters in the 1960s when President Lyndon Johnson pushed his Great Society programs and, more importantly, the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress. Four years later, in 1968, Richard Nixon wooed disenchanted Southern Democrats to win the presidency, setting the GOP on its current course, demographically, with voters of color. Read more.

The interesting thing to note about this particular segment is that the turning point for black loyalty to the Democrats is bathed in the facade that Democrats were the ones pushing for Civil Rights legislation under Johnson. This is something that Republicans had been pushing for over a long period of time, but were repeatedly shut down by Democrat majorities. Lyndon Johnson went against his party and some Democrats and a majority of Republicans came to his aid. THIS is how the Democrats clinched the black vote. They (as a party) did not wish to secure civil rights for blacks, however they repeatedly said that they did and expected that the public would believe them. They banked on this deception and the gamble paid off. To read more in depth and look at the Democratic and Republican party platforms, through the years (along with factual records to back up or debunk claims made in those platforms) see this document. This is a detailed 124 year side-by-side comparison of the two major political parties and their civil rights efforts–or lack thereof.

In order to maintain any level of political integrity, we must all do our own research. You sell yourself short if you just accept as fact what you see or hear reported. Find out if the facts back up the claims and then make your own decisions. Black or white, purple or green, we all owe it to ourselves to own our choices.

Will new warnings lead to coerced abortions and sterilization?

Obama's Science Czar, John Holdren has espoused controversial views on population control in the past.

Previously posted on our website, Political Integrity Now

By now you’ve heard the outrageous ideas put forth by Obama’s science Czar John Holdren in Ecoscience . This is the book where Holdren, joined with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, suggested that sterilants placed into our water and essential food supply would be a good way to limit population growth. The trio also tossed around the idea of mandatory adoptions for children born to mothers out of wedlock or to teen mothers, that is if the teens hadn’t already been forced to abort-as the book also suggests.

You may be thinking that this is a far-fetched notion, that these were just wild ideas in the world of academia, and that people don’t really believe this stuff. Think again.

Youthquake is a report put out by the radical group Optimum Population Trust. It is an urgent call to action to save the planet, not only from pollution, but from people. It’s OPT’s contention that overpopulation is killing our planet, and to save it, we should push for population reduction.

Without action, longages of humans – the prime cause of all shortages of resources – may cause parts of the planet to become uninhabitable, with governments pushed towards coercive population control measures as a regrettable but lesser evil than conflict and suffering.

OPT released a briefing in 2007 which says the following:

Population limitation should therefore be seen as the most cost-effective carbon offsetting strategy available to individuals and nations – a strategy that applies with even more force to developed nations such as the UK because of their higher consumption levels. A non-existent person has no environmental footprint: the emissions “saving” is instant and total. Given an 80-year lifespan and annual per capita emissions (2006) of 9.3 tonnes of CO2 (Defra, 2007, provisional), each Briton “foregone” – each addition to the population that does not take place – saves 744 tonnes of CO2, equivalent in emissions to 620 return flights from London to New York (1.2 tonnes of CO2 each).

Well there you have it! “A non-existent person has no environmental footprint.” A non-existent person also has no dissenting political views, no burden on society, no addition to health care costs, and no demand on social services. Whether people want to admit it or not, Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, believed strongly in eugenics. This is the theory that we can and should weed out the undesirables–you know, those who might be emitting too much CO2–or in her day, who were too poor, or too dumb, or too weak, or too black. Sanger’s idea was that we could use “family planning” to keep those “unfits” from reproducing.

At a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the “black” and “yellow” peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood.

Sanger’s other colleagues included avowed and sophisticated racists. One, Lothrop Stoddard, was a Harvard graduate and the author of The Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy. Stoddard was something of a Nazi enthusiast who described the eugenic practices of the Third Reich as “scientific” and “humanitarian.” And Dr. Harry Laughlin, another Sanger associate and board member for her group, spoke of purifying America’s human “breeding stock” and purging America’s “bad strains.” These “strains” included the “shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South.”

Not to be outdone by her followers, Margaret Sanger spoke of sterilizing those she designated as “unfit,” a plan she said would be the “salvation of American civilization.: And she also spike of those who were “irresponsible and reckless,” among whom she included those ” whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers.” She further contended that “there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.” That many Americans of African origin constituted a segment of Sanger considered “unfit” cannot be easily refuted.

The History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States

Still shaking your head thinking that forced sterilization can’t happen here? Unfortunately it already did. From 1930s to the 1970s, mass sterilization was taking place in Puerto Rico. Women were encouraged to get hysterectomies. Children in schools were taught that the key to economic success was having a small family. The average age for those who were sterilized was 26, with a full 1/3 of the island’s female population being sterilized by 1965! Many of those women were not told that the procedure was irreversible, and some were not even told that it was a surgery at all. Planned Parenthood had a hand here as well, after all, this primarily targeted poor and impoverished women–or as Margaret Sanger would say, “unfit.”

Which brings us back to recent studies on population control and dire warnings from environmentalists. Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost is literally a cost/benefit analysis of population control and pollution. Simply put, the study found that “family planning” is the “cheapest way to combat climate change.” Oregon State University statisticians have recently released a study that claims that having fewer children is the best way to reduce your carbon footprint.

While the OSU researchers make it clear they are not advocating government controls or intervention on population issues, we cannot ignore the fact that there are groups who are advocating coercive measures and that someone who has written about such things in the past, has the president’s ear. In a political environment where every day is the potential for a new crisis, as the next big thing, we have to wonder how many ways this new research can be used by an uber-progressive administration. Holdren has written about compulsory abortions and coerced sterilization, all in the name of the environmental movement. Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, recently resigned amid revelations of his radically controversial views. Obama has said that he wants to put science before ideology–but whose science and whose ideology?