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Remember when Republicans used to like Planned Parenthood? When it was championed by GOP leaders like Barry Goldwater and George H.W. Bush?
Well, forget it. Helping low-income families with preventive health care needs has become a right-wing cause for the Republican Party, apparently at multiple levels. In states where GOP candidates excelled in the 2010 elections, officials are targeting Planned Parenthood, and the crusade appears to be intensifying in Congress.*
House Republicans have opened a sweeping investigation into Planned Parenthood, requesting reams of financial information and details on how the women’s health organization keeps federal funds separate from abortion services.
House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) sent Planned Parenthood a six-page letter earlier this month detailing the committee’s request. House Republicans have repeatedly tried to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding because it provides abortions, even though federal funds are not used for those services.
“The Committee has questions about the policies in place and actions undertaken by PPFA and its affiliates relating to its use of federal funding and its compliance with federal restrictions on the funding of abortion,” the letter said.
Federal law already prohibits federal funds from being used to terminate pregnancies. There’s no evidence Planned Parenthood is ignoring this legal prohibition, and the organization’s programs are already regularly audited by the HHS inspector general and state Medicaid programs. Congressional Republicans are pursuing this anyway, just to see what they might be able to turn up.
Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) sent a letter to Stearns asking whether Planned Parenthood is being “singled out as part of a Republican vendetta against an organization that provides family planning and other medical care to low-income women and men.”
You think?
By way of background, it’s worth noting that Stearns signaled his intentions on this front in June, responding to dubious allegations raised by a far right-wing anti-abortion group. Americans United for Life, which is pushing for Congress to defund Planned Parenthood.
Raise your hand if you think there’s any chance at all that Planned Parenthood will get a dime of federal funds if there’s a Republican Congress and a Republican White House in 2013.
* link edited
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kevo on September 29, 2011 2:02 PM:
With every passing day, and with regard to issues such as funding Planned Parenthood, it is becoming obvious to all judicious observers that our dear brethren on the far Right have embraced a most hateful God in their Christian liturgy!
And it is their fidelity to their hateful God that allows them to be as cruel as they show themselves to be!
I'm more of a Jesus Dude when it comes to my Christian God! His feet could be annointed by any and all of God's children - have our hateful Christian set forgotten such redeemable knowledge? -Kevo
DAY on September 29, 2011 2:04 PM:
this is just another Republican GOTV ploy.
efgoldman on September 29, 2011 2:04 PM:
Enh. PP gets its lawyers to resist, it takes months for any action to percolate (and the courts refuse), and then its Nov 2012.
I mean, the GOBP intent is clearly malign, but there are lots of institutional barriers to put in their way.
Extreme Moderate on September 29, 2011 2:13 PM:
Steve, raise your hand if you think a republican congress and a republican house will fund a dime for medicare, medicaid, social security, the EPA, Pell Grants, low-income housing, the national weather service, the Department of Education as well as planned parenthood...this is what makes the 27% enthusiasm gap so scary
j on September 29, 2011 2:15 PM:
They are a bunch of creepy old men who have a fixation with controlling womens bodies.
Sort of like Sharia law?
sick-n-effn-tired. on September 29, 2011 2:21 PM:
Class Warfare? I'll show you fucking class warfare. Hurt those who can least afford it.
j on September 29, 2011 2:30 PM:
Like everyone else, I was upset that we did not get single payer health care, I heard all the complaints, and then I read the bill. I began saying to people - please be patient, the way I read it, Obama got what he could at the time, but I read that he is opening the door to single payer through the states, today I read the second state is going for single payer (Montana), if Vermont and Montana get this through, look out heath insurance companies, your days are numbered, apparently Obama is glad to give these states a waiver, so let's keep this quiet, or we will have billions spent against it.
sick-n-effn-tired. on September 29, 2011 2:32 PM:
and it could write the next Rachael Maddow ad > Tell me again how this is creating jobs you KOCHsuckers?
r on September 29, 2011 2:32 PM:
Jesus must be so proud.
James E. Powell on September 29, 2011 2:42 PM:
There's nothing like the stern letter. With very few exceptions, congressional Democrats are completely worthless.
I suppose the reason is that even if Planned Parenthood goes the way of ACORN, they will still get re-elected.
Josef K on September 29, 2011 3:00 PM:
Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) sent a letter to Stearns asking whether Planned Parenthood is being “singled out as part of a Republican vendetta against an organization that provides family planning and other medical care to low-income women and men.”
I admire Congressman Waxman, and confess I really don't know Congresswoman DeGette, but this kind of reaction just reinforces the nearly-iron-clad perception of the Democratic caucus as too weak in the knees to trust.
They send a letter asking if the Republicans are purusing a negative agenda here? I can appreciate wanting to appear 'reasonable' and even giving your opponent the benefit of the doubt. That might even work in more rational times.
But these are not rational or reasonable times, are they? Wonder if that'll actually penetrate the Democratic leadership's heads someday soon.
nodak on September 29, 2011 3:03 PM:
And yet large numbers of so called Dems and independents would rather sit out the election and give this country to these A$$wipes because Obama didn't give the crybabies EVERYTHING they wanted. What a Country!!!!
Bruce Webb on September 29, 2011 3:29 PM:
The assault on women's reproductive and sexual freedom is indeed at the root of the Right's assault on Planned Parenthood but the more covert narrative they are selling is even more dark. People on the left don't see it because we (rightfully) don't take Jonah Goldberg or Glen Beck seriously. But plenty of people see 'Liberal Fascism' as actually being a piece of scholarship (Gosh it has footnotes!) and a part of if centers on the following assertion:
"Margaret Sanger is directly responsible for Hitler's Genocide of the Jews. As in direct causal relation."
Now anyone who has the slightest understanding of how the German fixation on Aryanism arose from mostly 19th century theories of racialism will find this absurd. But for people who don't even understand our own history and think David Barton is a brilliant Constitutional scholar, i.e. your typical listener to Beck et all it makes sense. And since Margaret Sanger was also the founder of Planned Parenthood they are complicit with the Shoah by association.
A certain amount of attacks on Planned Parenthood that seem totally contentless actually have this message as a sub-text, that is the Holocaust is not just a metaphor for the effects of Birth Control, the latter in the Goldberg-Beck Worldview is literally the Genocide Ver 2.0.
Making the whole Liberal Fascism line a double barreled attack, Goldberg not only makes the argument that political fascism grew out of liberal roots, he equally argues that fascist racial purity ideology directly derived from liberal concepts of social and economic justice.
So when Beck babbles on about real Christianity not being infused by social justice it is not enough to point to the Sermon on the Mount, because a certain amount of Beck's 'analysis' is not driven by the history of Christian thought as such but instead seeing it as a counter-balance to what he sees as Margaret Sanger's double genocide.
Of course what Beck is telling his followers is gibberish and dangerous gibberish at that. This doesn't mean it doesn't have its own content and context. Most people can't see how somebody can at the same time be obsessed with Planned Parenthood and the End Times but the fringe wingnuts see it as all of a piece with Hitler's Final Solution. Literally.
As they say you can look it up.
Judy Martinez on September 29, 2011 4:45 PM:
Soooooo, there they go again. 1 by one the Rethugs are going after organizations which are a part of the Democrats' base and trying to defund them, overwhelm them with paperwork and slow down their work and ability to raise funds and to accomplish their mission. Anyway, we're getting used to that particular kind of temper tantrum.
Adi on September 29, 2011 7:46 PM:
Hmm, so making sure that Planned Parenthood keeps funds separate so that no federal money is spent for abortion services is very important. But, making sure that foreign groups cannot affect the integrity of the United States' election process is not an issue -- since they didn't support the Chamber of Commerce showing how they kept contributions from international supporters separate from the lobbying arm of their organization.