Getting South Carolina Lawmakers To Go On The Record

It isn’t hard to figure out why South Carolina state legislators spend taxpayer dollars so irresponsibly: anonymous voice votes shield them from being held accountable by constituents.

South Carolina ranks lowest in the nation for legislative accountability and the vast majority of votes in the state legislature are never recorded.  South Carolina is one of only five states where legislators are not required to record votes.  In 2008, the South Carolina House of Representatives recorded only 8 percent of votes on general bills or joint resolutions, and the Senate recorded only 1 percent.

A roll call rule to improve legislative vote recording took effect in January, but the measure is temporary and subject to the whims of the legislature.  The Spending Accountability Act of 2009 (H. 3047) is a more permanent solution introduced by possible 2010 gubernatorial candidate Rep. Nikki Haley.  S. 11 is the companion Senate bill.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are sponsoring the bills, but support is not universal.  Opponents say roll calls for every vote will incur unjustifiable expense, an excuse that’s pretty rich coming from legislators who approved funding for an Elvis impersonator, a deep fryer, and a “Doo-Da” Festival.

A House subcommittee hearing on the Spending Accountability Act is scheduled for Tuesday, April 21, 2009.  The citizens of South Carolina have a right to know how elected officials are voting on all issues brought before the South Carolina General Assembly.   Remind the legislature that transparency in government is not optional by urging them to pass H. 3047 out of committee so it can be voted on by the entire House.

Contact the following South Carolina House members, as well as your Representative, and let them know that open government is a principle worth fighting for.

Subcommittee Chair Denny Nielson
803-734-3097
DWN@schouse.org

Rep. Brian White
803-734-3113
WBW@schouse.org

Rep. Murrell Smith
803-734-3042
GMS@schouse.org

Rep. Herb Kirsh
803-734-3071

Speaker Bobby Harrell
803-734-3125
HSP@schouse.org

Chairman Dan Cooper
803-734-3144
HWM@schouse.org

Majority Leader Kenny Bingham
803-734-3138
KAB@schouse.org

Update, 4/21/09: The Spending Accountability Act of 2009 passed subcommittee today.  The next step is a hearing before the full House Ways and Means Committee tomorrow (Wednesday, April 22) at 2:30pm.  Contact information for all Ways and Means members is available on the State House Web site, or the following list of email addresses may be copied and pasted into your email client:

HWM@schouse.org, LDB@schouse.org, JAB@schouse.org, KAB@schouse.org, WC@schouse.org, GCH@schouse.org, TE@schouse.org, HB@schouse.org, KK@schouse.org, HBL@schouse.org, LFL@schouse.org, DAL@schouse. org, JL@schouse.org, JM1@schouse.org, JN@schouse.org, DWN@schouse.org, HLO@schouse.org, PittsT@schouse.org, RFR@schouse.org, JGS@schouse.org, GMS@schouse.org, JS@schouse.org, WBW@schouse.org, ADY@schouse.org

Update, 4/24/09: The meeting this week in which the Ways and Means Committee was scheduled to address the Spending Accountability Act was canceled.  A new meeting of the full Committee has not been announced, and Rep. Nikki Haley is calling the cancellation a “major setback.” The Committee may fail to review the bill before the House adjourns for the year.

Please, melt the phones and flood the Ways and Means Committee members with emails.  Let them know that voters expect H.3047 to pass during the current session.

Published by Jenn Q. Public on April 20, 2009

12 Comments 

New Film Will Out Gay Republicans

If a straight conservative outed a group of gay liberal politicians for any reason at all, the outrage would be palpable.  And rightly so.

Funny how a different standard applies when straight liberal filmmaker Kirby Dick announces his intention to out gay Republican politicos.  His new documentary film is called Outrage, and its tagline is “A searing exposé of the secret lives of closeted gay politicians.”

From indieWIRE :

The new film examines the double lives of a number of current political figures, mostly Republican men, who have masked their homosexuality through marriage to women and by actively working against the gay community. It explores the stories of politicians who, through their policies and voting records, actively bash gay people in order to prove they themselves are not gay. And it details a media establishment that keeps their secrets. The lives of former elected officals (and even some mainstream media figures) are also examined as the film explores the dual lives of public people who have chosen to live in the closet.

Translation: gay politicians who don’t toe the Democratic Party line are fair game to be pilloried as self-loathing hypocrites by an attention whoring documentarian.

You know, there’s a reason some conservatives toss around words like “gaystapo.”

Dick, a self-anointed hunter-in-chief of gay conservatives, believes that exposing supposed hypocrisy gives him absolute moral authority to force gay Republicans out of the closet.   But he just calls it good old-fashioned reporting:

“I think that if someone is in the closet and voting against gay rights then that’s hypocrisy and that’s cause for outing,” Dick told indieWIRE, addressing the issue of responsibility and when it’s appropriate to out people. “You can call it ‘outing,’ but honestly, it’s just reporting… It’s the same as someone who’s had an abortion and then votes against abortion, it’s hypocritical.”

The pretense is that outing is the great equalizer.  It is held up as a bold and noble act in defense of gays and lesbians.  In reality, it is petty, vindictive, and yes, often catty.  Dick’s film is just the latest flagrant attempt to silence and disenfranchise gay Americans who don’t kowtow to a liberal agenda.

The mere suggestion that gays are not an ideological monolith is a threat to the liberal narrative.  Liberal gay activists would have you believe that political and sexual identity are inextricably linked, that physical attraction somehow dictates whether one believes in gay marriage or hate speech legislation.  Outing is the go-to punishment for betrayal of that narrative.

Publicly exposing the sexual orientation of gay Republican congressmen is, of course, a poor strategy for achieving pretty much anything other than schadenfreude.  Most conservatives are indifferent to what goes on in the private bedrooms of public officials so long as all participants are consenting adults.

A representative from Magnolia Pictures, the distributor for Outrage, told indieWIRE the film “could be a ‘game changer’ for same sex civil rights.”  They would be hard pressed to come up with a more shallow, tone deaf analysis than that.  Smugly celebrating the discomfort of newly outed Republicans won’t help same sex marriage advocates make friends and influence people.  At worst, Kirby Dick’s misguided crusade may actually strengthen the resolve of the conservatives who believe that the liberal gay agenda threatens their way of life.

Hat Tip: Hot Air Headlines

Update: Good timing: GayPatriot annouces the upcoming launch of GOProud, a gay conservative organization.  Unlike the Log Cabin Republicans, you can expect this new 527 to adequately address issues like the outing of gay Republicans.  Also just popping up in my feed reader, Dan Blatt takes on Kirby Dick’s use of hypocrisy to justify the outing of gay Republicans.

Another update: Predictably, the bashing of GOProud has begun, with pages ripped right from the usual liberal playbook.  Here’s what’s bouncing around Twitter right now:

GOProud Slogan: We’re like the Log Cabin Republicans — but with 100% MORE self-loathing!

Fifty bucks says the terms self-loathing or self-hating appear more than once in Kirby Dick’s film.

Published by Jenn Q. Public on April 10, 2009

7 Comments 

Choice For Me, But Not For Thee

Health care provider conscience laws began to appear on the federal books shortly after the United States Supreme Court decided Roe v Wade in 1973.  These statutory provisions protect health care professionals from discrimination if they refuse to participate in abortion and sterilization services on the basis of religious or moral objections.

In 2008, the Bush administration issued a rule strengthening the requirements for compliance with the conscience protections set forth in the Public Health Service Act, the Church Amendments, and the Weldon Amendment.  Widely criticized as a nose-thumbing anti-abortion swan song for President Bush, the eleventh hour ruling was actually in the works for most of 2008.

Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services at the time, pushed for the regulation in response to a move by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG) to require pro-life physicians to provide abortion referrals as a condition of board certification.  Concerned that the ACOG and ABOG policies violated freedom of conscience and non-discrimination laws, HHS issued the final interpretive rule in December 2008.

The new administration moved swiftly to begin the rescission process when President Obama took office.  But, as Tabitha Hale points out, while the interpretation of conscience laws may change significantly under the Obama administration, it is highly unlikely that pro-life doctors will be forced to perform abortions any time soon.

And that just doesn’t sit well with Jacob Appel.  He’s a storytelling bioethicist with a fever, and the only cure is more abortionists.

You may remember Jacob Appel from his recent call for an abortion pride movement.  His latest lament is that the number of abortion providers has steadily decreased, and yet pro-life medical practitioners are still permitted to take up valuable slots in OB/GYN training programs.  He proposes that medical programs help abortion providers increase their ranks by using a pro-choice litmus test to screen OB/GYN residency applicants.

Using religious and moral objections to abortion to bar qualified doctors from receiving training in obstetrics and gynecology is a clear violation of conscience protection laws, but Appel has an answer for that.

In the case of abortion, the current shortage of providers justifies a limited waiver of conscience exemptions as applied to the training of new OBGYNs.  If we do not act, women may find themselves in a position similar to that of the criminal defendant who in theory has the legal right to counsel, but cannot find any lawyer willing to take her case.

Appel does not bother to address why a doctor who intends to specialize in geriatric gynecology, for example, would need to perform abortions.   He also neglects to consider that pro-life doctors are not the only ones who refuse to terminate pregnancies. Indeed, there are many pro-choice physicians who are just as unwilling to provide abortion services.

But the greatest flaw in Appel’s argument is his contention that he is a champion of patient choice and access.  Appel is only interested in ensuring choice and access for women seeking abortion doctors, not for women seeking doctors who respect their beliefs because they share them.

A woman should be able to choose a doctor whose moral compass points in the same direction as hers. Families should know that their doctor shares their values and will remain faithful to them, especially in a life or death situation.  Revoking conscience protections would revoke patient choice, a violation that would offend more pro-choice liberals if they were, at the very least, concerned with being consistent.

Most liberal feminists would balk at receiving gynecological care from a dedicated pro-lifer.  Shouldn’t pro-life women be able to choose a doctor who doesn’t engage in professional practices they find morally objectionable?

Appel’s essay is not a harmless, isolated intellectual exercise.  His views are shared by many of the liberal feminist chatterati, including some in the medical community.

Dr. Julie Cantor, for instance, feels conscientious objection in medicine has gone awry, and that we, as a society, are far too tolerant of individual conscience.  Like Appel, she believes that “physicians and other health care providers have an obligation to choose specialties that are not moral minefields for them. Qualms about abortion, sterilization, and birth control? Do not practice women’s health.”  She feigns passionate support for putting patients’ interests first, but not so shockingly, that support does not extend to choosing a doctor one doesn’t consider an agent of death.

A doctor’s conscientious refusal to perform an abortion does not strip a patient of her constitutionally protected right to seek an abortion, not even if she has to get an advance on her paycheck and shimmy across the frozen tundra on her pregnant belly to reach the closest abortion provider.  The government is not your mom, your BFF, and your knight in shining armor all rolled into one convenient, omnipresent package.

There is, without a doubt, a demand for abortion providers in America.  There is also a demand for doctors whose work is informed by a pro-life perspective on abortion, contraception, sterilization, and end-of-life decisions.  It is not the government’s role to decide that one of these categories of professionals should be phased out because it is less valuable than the other.

When did it become acceptable to ask the government to facilitate the subordination of a pro-life patient’s dignity to a pro-choice patient’s dignity?

Published by Jenn Q. Public on April 7, 2009

2 Comments 

That Pound of AIG Executive Flesh Won’t Pay Your Tax Bill

Grab your pitch fork!  Light your torch!  There’s a battle to be waged in the name of egalitarianism.  There are wrongs to be righted on behalf of the aggrieved proletariat.

No weapon is off limits to this populist mob of angry legislators, outraged officials, indignant journalists and seething private citizens. Punitive taxation, public shaming, intimidation, and even threats of physical violence are all fair play if the greedy rich at AIG are to get their just deserts.

Among the recent threats against AIG executives and their families:

“Get the bonus, we will get your children.”

“I would be very careful when I went out side. This is just a warning. If I were ya’ll I would be real afraid.”

“Publish the list of those yankee scumbags so some good old southern boys can take care of them.”

“We will hunt you down. Every last penny. We will hunt your children and we will hunt your conscience. We will do whatever we can to get those people getting the bonuses.  Give back the money or kill yourselves.”

“The Revolution is coming. The family members of your executives are not safe. Your blood will run through the streets in the coming months.”

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo attempted to satisfy an increasingly bloodthirsty public by threatening to disclose the names of AIG bonus recipients if they did not return the payments.  And back in Washington, Rep. Barney Frank demanded the names of recipients and refused to keep them confidential in response to safety concerns.

To further address public cries for the heads of AIG executives, the House easily passed a bill to impose a 90 percent tax on executive bonuses at bailed out companies.  The legislation garnered support from most House Democrats and nearly half of Republicans, though it appears to be dead in the Senate.

Even President Obama wondered how AIG executives could “justify this outrage to the taxpayers” and with utter disregard for the sanctity of private contracts, asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to “pursue every legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”

One problem: block the bonuses and you lose the talent.

Why should you care if AIG suffers a blow to its executive workforce?

Forget your outrage that taxpayers are underwriting these bonuses and think for a minute.  Panicky legislators tossed barrels of cash at AIG many months ago and our only hope of getting those billions back is to ensure the company is skillfully dismantled by knowledgeable executives. If AIG assets aren’t sold off in an orderly, uninterrupted manner, your government’s investment will become your tax liability.

I know it hurts to say it, but keeping the remaining AIG executives at the company is in your best interest.

Many AIG executives worked for $1 salaries last year with the expectation that they would be compensated with bonuses if they remained at the beleaguered company.  This manner of structuring compensation helped AIG retain qualified employees to dismantle the company.  What we’re calling retention bonuses are essentially deferred salary payments postponed to ensure talent sticks around.

Even if you had the specialized knowledge, would you work for just a dollar a year?  Would you pass up a stable, high paying job at a solvent company out of sheer loyalty to AIG?  And where else should AIG management have looked to find expertise on dissolving these complex financial instruments and assets?  Could we spare the time for training and learning curves?

Unfortunately, the threats have worked and the strong-arming has paid off.   Jake DeSantis, an executive Vice President at AIG Financial Products, published his letter of resignation in the New York Times this week:

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

Like most current AIG executives, DeSantis was not responsible for the company’s massive credit default swap losses, but that hasn’t insulated him from the witch hunt conducted by Barney Frank, Andrew Cuomo, and others.  Rather than remain at AIG out of fear, he has elected to leave on his own terms.

News of two more AIG resignations was announced Thursday.   Mauro Gabriel, president and CEO of Banque AIG, and Jim Shephard, deputy CEO are leaving due to the hostile business environment at AIG.  There is some concern that a failure to find replacements could result in hundreds of billions of dollars in derivative contract defaults.

If that happens, good luck attracting qualified talent to help wrap up this AIG mess.

Will the rabble-rousing have been worth it then?  Will that pound of executive flesh fill the coffers at Treasury?  No, but that won’t stop the public hunger for class warfare from continuing to eclipse law, ethics, and even self-interest.

Published by Jenn Q. Public on March 27, 2009

13 Comments 

Breaking News: The Pope Thinks Catholicism is Swell

En route to the capital of Cameroon on Tuesday, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the spread of HIV in Africa:

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

The pope said that a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.

This is where I’m supposed to insert my outrage and indignation at the Pope’s criminally negligent condemnation of artificial contraceptives.  Something about how he has the blood of thousands of Africans on his hands, perhaps?

But is that what the Pope really said?

Context is everything, and it seems that most media reports of the Pope’s words were decidedly out of context. Consider this more complete transcript from the Catholic News Service:

I would say that this problem of AIDS cannot be overcome with advertising slogans. If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem. The solution can only come through a twofold commitment: firstly, the humanization of sexuality, in other words a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another; and secondly, true friendship, above all with those who are suffering, a readiness – even through personal sacrifice – to be present with those who suffer. And these are the factors that help and bring visible progress.

Hey, wait a minute … the Pope thinks condoms won’t address the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa if people aren’t tending to their spiritual needs and being kind to one another? How dare he deliver this shocking defense of Catholic doctrine?

The Pope is no dummy.  He knows that AIDS has ravaged Africa and that in seven southern African countries, more than 15 percent of adults have HIV.  But will 15 percent of adults give up the right to have children if the Pope himself hands them a pack of Trojans?  Will a condom on every bedside table prevent the violent transmission of HIV through rape (another epidemic in the region)?  Of course not.

The Catholic Church does incredible work in Africa providing medical care to HIV patients and distributing anti-retroviral drugs.  Resolving the AIDS crisis will require a combination of money, research, education, medical care, counseling, social reform, and prophylactics. If the Roman Catholic Church provides most of those in abundance, does its leader really deserve our ire?

Published by Jenn Q. Public on March 20, 2009

9 Comments 

ObamaCare: More of the Same Sicko Ideas

When Barack Obama convened a White House forum on health care reform last week, there was one ground rule: check fresh ideas at the door. Of course, you’d never know that from Obama’s opening remarks rife with the usual bipartisan Mad Libbery:

In this effort, every voice has to be heard. Every idea must be considered. Every option must be on the table. There should be no sacred cows. Each of us must accept that none of us will get everything that we want, and that no proposal for reform will be perfect. If that’s the measure, we will never get anything done. But when it comes to addressing our health care challenge, we can no longer let the perfect be the enemy of the essential. And I don’t think anybody would argue that we are on a sustainable path when it comes to health care.

Despite the inclusive rhetoric, invitees were carefully selected to ensure no contraband proposals made it past security checkpoints.  Among the attendees were the usual suspects:

The vast majority of the groups represented at the summit strongly support a federal health insurance plan, and some are even advocates of a single-payer system. The list of summit participants included no fewer than nine unions: SEIU, UFCW, USW, Teamsters, UAW, CWA, Change to Win, AFSCME, and AFL-CIO.

The attendance list also included Physicians for a National Health Program (“Our Mission: Single-Payer National Health Insurance“) and other liberal advocacy groups such as the Center for American Progress, Campaign for America’s Future, AARP, Planned Parenthood, Families USA, and Health Care for America Now.

Advocates of free market health care models were conspicuously absent.  Michael Cannon notes that the guest list excluded representatives from some of the top health policy think tanks in the world, including:

  • American Enterprise Institute (the #5 think tank in the world for health policy)
  • Cato Institute (ranked #7)
  • National Center for Policy Analysis (ranked #10)
  • Manhattan Institute
  • Pacific Research Institute
  • Galen Institute
  • The Heritage Foundation

What could analysts from these policy centers bring to the table?  Here’s just one example of an innovative approach to health care outlined by John Cochrane in a paper published by the Cato Institute.  He proposes a systemic reform that would separate health coverage into two products: medical insurance and what he calls health-status insurance.  “Medical insurance covers your medical expenses in the current year, minus deductibles and copayments. Health-status insurance covers the risk that your medical premiums will rise,” he explains.

John Cochrane’s free market solution would provide portability, preserve choice, and increase affordability. But as Reason Magazine’s Ronald Bailey points out in his excellent summary of the plan, Dr. Cochrane did not receive an invitation to the White House summit.

John Cochrane and other creative thinkers have been locked out of the debate, but the Teamsters and UAW have the president’s ear as he prepares to make a $634 billion down payment on health care reform. What happened to “every voice has to be heard”?

Published by Jenn Q. Public on March 13, 2009

5 Comments 

← Previous Page — Next Page →