Planned Parenthood

Today, in the United States Congress, the Republican party is squaring off for a fight. They plan to shut the government down again. This is very much like a little child stomping off when he doesn't get his way, but the effects of a government shutdown won't be good for our economy and won't be good for America.

Lo, let us put this plainly: Republicans do not want what is good for America if they vote to shut down the government.

But let us examine this further: What is it that Planned Parenthood does? Planned Parenthood is a national franchise of clinics that are funded with donations and government funds to offer free healthcare to anyone who walks in. Most of their patients are woman and most of those women are not well off. Where does the money they get go?

By and large, as you can see from the chart above, Planned Parenthood is spending the bulk of their money—76%—on STD testing and treatment as well as contraception. STD treatment and testing reduces the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases, which can cripple. Some STDs can also sterilize women, so if you think that women ought to be able to have babies, you should be in favor of Planned Parenthood. 

Bristol Palin cannot seem to practice what she preaches

Then there is contraception. Since contraception tends to reduce abortions and you do not like abortions, you ought to be in favor of Planned Parenthood, unless your position is, like Bristol Palin, that abstinence is the only acceptable to not get pregnant. Unfortunately, for Ms. Palin, that does not seem to be working out very well for her, as she is pregnant once again—out of wedlock with her second child conceived while she was telling others to not have sex. I think that is a big problem for her, even though Planned Parenthood also offers services to married persons as well as single persons who want family planning options.

Here is what the opposition to Planned Parenthood is, more than anything else. It is about denial of the same kinds of health services that wealthy people have to the poor.

Carly Fiorina can afford an abortion. It is legal, it is available and there are still physicians in the United States who will do the procedure. The wives of all of the other Presidential candidates can afford an abortion and they can get one any time they want to. They can also get contraception, cancer screening, STD testing and treatment and any medical service their heart desires.

Carly Fiorina wants poor people to not be able to get healthcare

But Carly Fiorina and the rest of the Republicans do not want poor people to get any of these services. They don't like the fact that poor people can walk into a free Planned Parenthood clinic and see a physician, get medical services and go on with their lives.

You can see this clearly in the way that Republicans absolutely oppose Medicaid expansion in all of their states (with very few exceptions) because they want to punish poor people by reserving healthcare for the very rich. Under the Republican philosophy, poor people are to be denied any access to competent physicians and other healthcare services because they are poor and it's all their fault. Republican policies had nothing to do with this, either (they believe that the teacers' unions caused the 2008 economic crisis and not the banks, the investment bankers and the policies espoused by Republicans since Reagan.

This leads me to a theory howard Zinn proposed in his book, A People's History of the United States. He suggested that, the reason why the wealthy people wanted poor people to stay poor is so that they could pit them against the people they really didn't like—black people. I have to suggest that, after the constant rhetoric I hear coming out of Donald Trump (and not refuted by any of the other Republican Presidential candidates) this extends to Chinese people and Mexican people (as well as those with those ancestries) also.

So, in order to keep the "nonwhites" down, we must have lots of white poor people, whose position is that, at least they have no African, Mexican and Chinese ancestry. These poor white people will have nasty, short, brutish lives without any possibility of ever seeing a physician.

Now, that is a pretty extreme stance, but, as I look at the current Republican rhetoric, I have to wonder if it is really true and that Republicans really want to build an America like that. I would love to see some well-researched refutations of this.

How Trump Works

I think that the GOP would just as soon Donald Trump would have melted down by now but, to their surprise, he is going strong. We are headed into the second Republican debate and he will, once again, be in the center, leading the pack.

I want to note a few things that Trump seems to be all about. He, apparently, hates Hispanic people and seems to characterize all of them as Mexican nationals, no matter where they are from. And all Mexicans are murderers and rapists. This kind of rhetoric caused a lot of companies to decide to quit doing business with him, including the PGA tour, NBC and one of the Spanish-language television networks, Univision. Trump decided to sue Univision when they dropped coverage of his Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants.

Since Univision does have a large Hispanic viewing audience, their news division wanted to interview candidate Donald Trump about his statements concerning Mexicans living here in the United States and his apparent issues with them. Their polls show that Trump enjoys a 75% negative rating with Hispanics and the network believes that he cannot win any national Presidential election if he does not have a great deal of Hispanic support. I know what they do in news departments. They task someone with calling twice a day every day to ask for an interview. Someone from Univision has been calling the Trump organization every day for, at this writing, three months. The person making the call may not be a top reporter and certainly is not their national news anchorperson, but these calls are being made. Were anyone from the Trump organization to suggest that Donald Trump would be happy to take an interview request from Univision, the follow-up would be at a high level.

So, after Donald Trump has refused any question from Univision for three months now, evening news anchor Jorge Ramos decided to attend a press conference held by Donald Trump.

I happened to turn on the television at that time—not to listen to Donald Trump but, rather, to see what was happening and to rest from a trying day. And, in tuning around, I noted that CNN, MSNBC and Faux "news" were all carrying the news conference live. I found this fact, alone, interesting. They do not do this with any of the other candidates. And, I think that with Donald Trump, he says such outrageous things that there is some fascination.

I had flipped back to MSNBC when Jorge Ramos stood up. I heard Ramos' questions—CNN did not have good audio on Ramos' questions (I found that out later). Donald Trump saw the Univision anchorman stand up and immediately turned to the center and tried to call on another reporter. The reporter Trump called on did not ask a question and, instead, listened to the exchange between Jorge Ramos and Trump. Ramos was asking how the United States could afford to deport 11 million persons in the United States who had overstayed their visas or entered this country without proper paperwork. He also asked how Donald Trump was going to build a wall over the entire US-Mexico border (knowing that many of the undocumented aliens in this country come by air and other means) and how Donald Trump could claim that he would get the Hispanic vote when a vast majority of Hispanics have an unfavorable view of Donald Trump.

Each of these questions are fair questions, because all of this information is the kind of information Donald Trump shares with the press and the American people every time he gives a speech. But the situation was interesting. Jorge Ramos was conducting an "ambush interview." And attempting to ambush someone is also fair, as Donald Trump and his organization have refused to offer an interview with Univision for three months. Trump knows this, because he tells his people to ignore their requests.

Rolonda Watts

In an "ambush interview," often the goal is to simply show the response to the ambush of the person being interviewed. In 1990, I edited a number of "ambush interviews with Inside Edition and I became quite familiar with how they work. Ambush interviews are the staple of investigative reporting on television, where the interviewee often does not wish to be interviewed. In 1990, I edited the report by Rolonda Watts with Byron De La Beckwith, the man who murdered Medgar Evers. Apparently, De La Beckwith had kept the murder weapon in his home and it was discovered in 1990. Watts telephoned him from New York and asked for an interview. She told me that De La Beckwith told her over the phone that Inside Edition was not to send a "nigger, jap, Jew or a spick" to interview him. Rolonda, who is black, told him that she would personally do the interview so that he could tell his side of the story.

Inside Edition had two cameras rolling as De La Beckwith threw Ms. Watts off his property. I recall we had to "bleep" out considerable profanity from De La Beckwith. We aired the ambush pretty much as it happened.

A few of my friends have suggested to me that Jorge Ramos was being rude, that he was not recognized, that he spoke out of turn. Not true. Every single reporter in the room knew what was going on. And so did Donald Trump. Trump thought he could simply refuse to call on Ramos and that would settle the issue. But Ramos was all set to jump in as soon as Trump drew a breath and went looking for another "softball." And the rules of decorum change in an ambush. This is an ambush that Donald Trump set up as soon as he decided to ignore Univision for three months.

Jorge Ramos

For my readers who are not Hispanic, that is like throwing Lester Holt from NBC or David Muir from ABC or Scott Pelley from CBS out of a press conference. You don't do that. You take the question and you try to maintain some dignity if you think the news anchorperson is going to make things hot for you. Instead, Trump revealed his real feelings for Hispanic Americans. He glanced at his bodyguard, who all but shoved Ramos out of the room and as that was happening, Trump told Ramos to "go back to Univision."He couldn't say Mexico because he knew the rest of the reporters in the press conference would immediately all start asking questions about his latest insult to Hispanic-Americans. Once out in the hallway, Trump's bodyguard said "Get out of my country" to Ramos, who was naturalized as a US citizen in 2008. Ramos is a respected, award-winning journalist and deserves treatment as such. Donald Trump treated him like he would like the United States to treat everyone of foreign origin.

That treatment is the reaction that Ramos' questions created in Donald Trump and, just as in the case where Byron De La Beckwith threw Rolonda Watts off his lawn, demonstrating his extreme prejudice, Trump demonstrated exactly the same prejudice with Ramos.

I would say that the score is Univision 2, Trump 0.

Now, Trump, realizing what just happened, did invite Ramos back to ask his question, whereupon Trump wanted Ramos' question to be all about Trump's lawsuit, but this would serve to be more mistreatment. At one point, Trump announced that he "liked Ramos." But he also said he did not know Ramos—even though he had refused to take a question from him, had him ejected from a press conference and also told him to "go back to Univision." Trump does something outrageous and has a meltdown in front of live crowds (throwing red meat to the isolationist radical racists in the Republican party) and then acts like it's all in fun.

I am hopeful that these meltdowns become more frequent so that America can really see who the Republican front-runner is. This says a whole lot about the Republican Party in general that they would accept Donald Trump as a candidate. I don't think America wants to hire such a volatile person as President.

Herman Cain and Entitlements

Unlike some, I have been doing a lot of reading of the Republican hopefuls' websites to determine what they are saying about where they are on the issues.

And one of the things I appreciate about one of the candidates is that he felt free, within a Republicans-only field, to tack to the middle. That was Mitt Romney. He told Rick Perry that calling Social Security a "ponzi scheme" was wrong and that it would make him unelectable. Furthermore, he said on September 8th on Fox's Hannity Show: "If we nominate someone who the Democrats can correctly characterize as being opposed to Social Security, we will be obliterated as a party."

Obviously, Romney's people are not reading Herman Cain's website.

Cain's 9-9-9 plan is all the buzz these days. He has received criticism from Michelle Bachman, saying, “When you take the 9-9-9 plan and you turn it upside won, the devil is in the details." While this is the kind of quote that makes her seem really silly, what she's after here is the idea of a national sales tax. “The last thing you would do is give Congress another pipeline of a revenue stream,” she said. “And this gives Congress a pipeline in a sales tax.”

Frankly, I don't particularly like sales taxes on the national level because they are regressive. They hit poor people harder than they hit anyone else, with poor people paying a larger percentage of their income in these types of taxes for necessities than wealthy people, who can afford to simply save their money or invest it. With Cain's plan there would be a flat tax, with poor people paying 18% of their income in taxes and with the wealthy paying between 12 and 14% of their income in taxes (between the sales and income taxes both at 9%). Poor people currently pay around 2% of their income in taxes.

Many economists have looked into the 9% flat tax and have declared that it's not enough. Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden ran the numbers and said. "it would leave us with deficits over 11 percent of GDP," which is higher than any deficit the United States has run since WW II.

But the key point of Cain's proposal is ending Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and all safety nets. Here is what is on his website under the heading of "Entitlements" which is the current "dirty word" to Republicans, as "welfare" used to be back in the 1990s:

"For the generations or workers who have paid into Social Security and Medicare, the federal government’s inevitable failure to pay them as they retire is undeniably stealing. These are generations who have worked and sacrificed to leave this country a better place for their children and grand children as they retire. The current behavior of an out of control federal government does little to ease their minds.

"The federal government has imposed expensive and often counter-productive social and welfare programs on the states and the people. It is time to admit the mistakes, and get the federal government out of the way. This will allow states, cities, churches, charities and businesses to offer a helping hand instead of a handout where they live. People closest to the problems are the best ones to solve the problems effectively.

"We can fulfill our responsibility to our golden age citizens and future retirees by empowering them instead of restricting them."

(Emphasis mine.)

So, let me get this straight: Government should "get out of the way," and let the states (who have budget issues of their own), churches, charities and businesses ensure that elderly Americans who have worked all of their lives and have faithfully put in to the Social Security and Medicare system live with dignity? Churches, states, charities and businesses will send everyone a monthly social security check and provide healthcare, while the federal government just walks away?

Herman Cain wants to end Social Security and Medicare with his 9-9-9 plan, not by phasing it out, but by cutting it off abruptly—just walking away and saying, "Oh, sorry."

And Social Security is not an imposition on the states. Social Security is a federal check that arrives in the mail or in a recipient's bank account monthly. I know is because my 80-year-old father receives a Social Security benefit and so does my disabled older sister. And I have asked them. Medicare is also a federal benefit and not an imposition on the states. Medicaid is an imposition on the states because the federal government gives the states money and has them administer the program, but it is not funded out of payroll taxes like Medicare and Social Security. The Affordable Care Act is supposed to reduce the expenditures of the states on Medicaid by insuring everyone. The only other imposition on the states that comes out of payroll taxes in unemployment insurance. Herman Cain wants to end that, too?

The Third Party

The United States system, from the very beginnings of our partisan Republic under President Washington, has tended to be run by two parties. The first two were the Democratic Republicans, who tended to follow Jefferson and the Federalists, who tended to follow Alexander Hamilton and helped our second President, John Adams (but not enough to get him re-elected for a second term).

Some years I read a lot about this in a very good book entitled American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns. The book's author, Richard N. Rosenfeld edits together excerpts from the Philadelphia Aurora, a newspaper that was published by Benjamin Franklin's grandson, Benjamin Bache, and later by William Duane, this newspaper was certainly not on the side of President Washington and absolutely dead set against John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. You also read articles from the opposing newspapers of that era, offering rebuttals and supporting their side. The book is listed by Amazon as "out of print, which is a real shame. People should be reading it now to better understand the rise of "faux news" as the Murdoch empire promulgates it. Another parallel was the pressure on the Press of that era to make enough money to survive. The Philadelphia Aurora received printing jobs from the Democratic-Republicans, while opposing newspapers, such as the Gazette of the United States received printing jobs from the Federalists. Were it not for the extra money earned from printing everything from official documents for the United States to commissioned pamphlets, these newspapers would have failed.

Today, we have a government that has tended to create a two-party system. When Jefferson won his first election, most of the states had decided on a winner-take-all system for electors (because they opposed Adams) and this continues to this day, denying third parties the Presidency with regularity. And, in Congress, since the end of Reconstruction, there have been a total of 31 U.S. Senators, 111 Representatives, and 22 Governors that weren't affiliated with a major party. That's not a lot since the 1870s.

But today, we have a third party that is involved in affairs in the House of Representatives and is also a threat to Republican members of Congress. It's the Tea Party. The Tea Party has its own sources of funding. And they have their own grass roots movements. But they're acting, not like a loyal segment of the Republican Party, they're acting mostly on their own. And they're refusing to cooperate with Speaker Boehner's agenda, for the most part.

Here is how the Republicans can stop this:

They can declare the Tea Party not loyal and not Republican, refusing to allow their candidates to run against Republicans in primaries. After all, registered Democrats cannot run against Republicans in primaries, so why should Tea Party candidates? This keeps Republican seats safe from primary challenges and takes the fear away from them.

And Speaker Boehner can declare his Republicans capable of dealing with either of the two smaller parties in the House of Representatives. So if the Tea Party freshmen won't back him, he'll just cross the aisle and compromise with the Democrats. Either way, he leads. Either way, he wins. And since the Tea Party cannot run against him or any Republican candidate in a primary, they're able to campaign as the center movement in America. Not lefties like Democrats, not hard-line Nazis like the Tea Party.

For too long, the Press has not seen the Tea Party for what it is. It is its own entity. It is not Republican and it is not Democrat. And one thing I have noted is that the Tea Party platform favors something that only one other political party in the United States has ever favored: The complete dismemberment of American government. The party that favors dismantling our government, along with the Tea Party is the Communist Party—though after the fall of the Soviet Union, I have to wonder if they still have any members left.

So I would invite Speaker Boehner to see the Tea Party as their own thing and not caucus with them. He can do more and win more by compromising with the larger, Democratic, Party and push this radical group into the corner, where they belong.

Musings

Well, it's been a twisted road.

I used to work in television and now I make websites. Perhaps that is the way it ought to be because television is headed to online as television audiences become massively more fragmented and as more and more people find easier ways to connect to the Internet at something approaching decent speeds.

Decent. That means you're not doing 56k dialup. It means websites load all at once. It means you're able to get content from the Internet that includes video and audio that does not stutter, drop frames and look overly cartoonish due to compression. 

Frankly, as someone who worked for 25 years in television, everything on the internet makes really crummy VHS look good. And I have a fair amount of experience in high-definition as well as our previous US television standard.

I now have three websites under my belt—four if you count my own. I am still working on learning php and, if anyone knows how to reliably set up a testing server on a Macintosh running a Power PC chip, I'd surely love to know how to set up a mySQL database with php without making my computer unsafe to run. 

I did buy a good book on Dreamweaver. It goes through the steps but the MAMP software has changed so much that the book is now incorrect. Anyone want to help?

I do like Dreamweaver. You can work in code or you can just put the page together using the Design view and it won't create bad code. It also checks for compatibility with browsers that won't run on a Mac, like Microsoft's Internet Exploder. And that is a great feature.

I can't buy Dreamweaver CS4. It won't run on my venerable G4-400 that I purchased in 1999. I did upgrade the processor and put 1.5G of system RAM into it. My Venerable G4 is proving the concept that, if you buy a Macintosh and you buy one that is not trailing-edge, you will pay less over the years of service for your Apple computer than you will anyone else's. Today's Intel-based Apple computers run Microsoft's operating system faster than anything comparable made by anyone else. There's so much innovation at Apple that I still recommend their stock.

My clients are really happy with the websites I made them. One of them has a "contact" form that took me three days of noodling and internet searching to build. Now, I can make a contact form in a snap by simply copying and pasting code with Dreamweaver. That's hot.

I sure hope this political situation sorts out. In Washington, DC you have these Republicans posturing that they'll stop any government spending aimed at helping the main mass of people out. Seems Republicans only want to help out the rich guy. Frankly, if I were a rich guy, I'd be happy to be helped out. But it would bother me if government help was impoverishing others. I've seen too much poverty in my life to want to see the United States play host to that kind of lifestyle for most of the wage earners.

Republicans are telling everyone that this stimulus bill "spends too much." Gee, they must think we're pretty dumb because they were all-too happy to pass non-budgeted bills to make war in Iraq and waste millions and trillions of taxpayer dollars fixing up Iraq. They seem to think we have forgotten how happy they were to spend back when Bush was running things.

I suppose it's always the Party in Opposition that wants to be "fiscally-conservative." But that's not true, either. The Hoover administration wanted to be fiscally-conservative during the Great Depression. And his party backed him while they were in power. Problem is, that didn't work out so well for most Americans.

My mother, who was born in 1930, wanted me to learn how to do hard work. She had me working in restaurants when I was in high school. It built character and was always something I could fall back on. Well, I understand restaurants these days. And if this business of making websites doesn't pan out, I suppose I could always wait on tables or wash dishes.