Hil and Drill
I’ll flood you with weekend reads tomorrow — today, just a couple of issues that need our attention: the Pub push to end birth control, and the Drill Drill Drill business.
Hillary and Cecile give us the heads up on womens health care. And on drilling, the House did a good job with their part — the Senate, as usual, hid dangerous give-aways in the small print. If petitions don’t come around for this, contact your Congressperson’s ASAP and let them know accountability starts NOW!
Jude
Blocking Care for Women
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON and CECILE RICHARDS, NYT
September 18, 2008
LAST month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women’s rights and women’s health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing — whether it’s a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government — certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable.
Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception.
Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.
The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD’s and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.
The rule would also allow providers to refuse to participate in unspecified “other medical procedures” that contradict their religious beliefs or moral convictions. This, too, could be interpreted as a free pass to deny access to contraception.
Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of “other medical procedures.” Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription?
The Bush administration argues that the rule is designed to protect a provider’s conscience. But where are the protections for patients?
The 30-day comment period on the proposed rule runs until Sept. 25. Everyone who believes that women should have full access to medical care should make their voices heard. Basic, quality care for millions of women is at stake. ++
Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic senator from New York. Cecile Richards is the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
The Senate’s ‘Drill Drill Drill’ Bill Hides Nuke Power Mega-Theft
Harvey Wasserman, CommonDreams
Thursday, September 18, 2008
The McCain/Palin push for endless oil drilling is being used as a smokescreen to gouge a half-trillion or more taxpayer dollars in subsidies and loan guarantees to build new atomic reactors. The mega-theft could be approved by the US Senate this week. Green activists throughout the nation are calling their Senators, as should you.
The atomic power industry can’t get private financing to build new reactors. So while Wall Street plummets into catastrophe, it is using the “drill drill drill” mantra to hide this latest raid on the depleted federal treasury.
The new Senate bill authorizes the oil industry to drill for oil virtually anywhere it wants, without meaningful environmental restraint. The enormous profits would stay in the hands of the petro-barons.
Hidden in the bill is a limitless blank check for loan guarantees to build new reactors. A year ago the industry tried to slip $50 billion in guarantees into a bill sponsored by Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), nuke power’s chief Congressional pusher. A national grassroots campaign, sparked in part by NukeFree.org and other national green groups, helped beat the bill. Not a single major environmental organization supported the reactor industry.
Now desperate reactor builders have upped the ante, demanding a wide range of financial give-aways and regulatory favors to jump-start a technology defined by fifty years of proven failure. The centerpiece is a loan guarantee plan to stick taxpayers with 100% of the liability for failed reactor construction projects. The GOP McCain/Palin ticket wants at least 45 new reactors for the US, with a price tag that could easily exceed $500 billion, all of which would be guaranteed by this bill.
On Tuesday, September 16, the House passed a bill engineered by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that limits new drilling to no less than 50 miles offshore. State approval is required, but all profits would go to a federal fund to promote renewable energy. There are no subsidies for nuke power. George W. Bush has threatened a veto.
Neither existing nor proposed reactors can get private insurance, so taxpayers are already liable for disasters by terror or error. The industry wants the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license its proposed high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain despite overwhelming opposition from the people of Nevada. Current cost estimates are in the $100 billion range.
Reactor pushers in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and elsewhere are now in the process of forcing ratepayers to fork over billions in higher electric bills to pay for new reactors while they are being built.
But the McCain/Palin blank check in the Senate’s “Drill Drill Drill” bill would put hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the line for a new generation of radioactive time bombs, deployed on our soil, guaranteed to fail.
The time to stop this is now. Call your Senator immediately. ++
The Democrats Actually Got It Right on the Drill Bill Legislation
House Adopts Plan to Ease Offshore Drilling Ban
Maryscott OConnor, SmirkingChimp
September 17, 2008
Like Rachel Maddow, I am frequently disgusted beyond belief at congressional Democrats’ seeming perennial willingness to cravenly cave on issues that cause them electoral fear.
However, though it appears yet another of those cowardly Democratic crumbles in the face of political intimidation, today’s vote on offshore drilling is actually one of the most brilliant pieces of political jujitsu I’ve ever seen from a Democratic House of Representatives.
I know! Whodathunkit!
Rachel Maddow, in the “Talk Me Down” segment of her MSNBC show last night, actually missed an opportunity to more thoroughly explain this to her audience with the help of the charming and intelligent New York Democratic House Representative, Louise Slaughter. Too intent on focusing on the Democrats’ “cave,” Maddow overlooked Slaughter’s incisive explanation, which the New York Times also distilled easily:
Under the Democratic legislation, adopted by a vote of 236 to 189, oil companies would lose some tax benefits, utilities would be required to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and a ban on developing fuel from Rocky Mountain shale would be lifted.
The legislation, which faces significant hurdles to becoming law before Congress breaks at the end of the month, would allow drilling as close as 50 miles from the coastline if adjacent states agree and 100 miles out no matter a state’s position. It would impose stricter oversight on the agency that handles oil leasing and royalty payments after recent disclosures of improper relationships between its employees and oil industry representatives.
“We are opening up to 400 million acres off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to drilling and expanding the availability of oil by at least 2 billion barrels,” said Representative Nick J. Rahall II, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the Natural Resources Committee. “And we have done so in a balanced, reasonable and responsible manner.”
Republicans, who have made political gains by portraying Democrats as flatly opposed to new drilling, said the measure was a sham intended to provide Democrats cover from voters furious over gas prices. They faulted it for failing to add incentives for coal and nuclear power and for not limiting environmental suits against drilling proposals. They also criticized Democrats for not negotiating with Republicans in writing the bill.
“We are engaged in exactly what the American people are sick of, and that is political games here in Washington that are intended to be political games and have no outcome,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader.
A Republican effort to sidetrack the measure with a procedural tactic was rebuffed on a vote that generally adhered to party lines. That cleared the way for approval of the proposal, which drew strong support from Democrats including conservatives from states with strong oil and gas industries. On the final vote, 221 Democrats and 15 Republicans supported it; 176 Republicans and 13 Democrats were opposed.
“It represents a critical turning point,” said Representative Dan Boren, Democrat of Oklahoma, who praised the bill for provisions that would encourage greater use of natural gas. “Today is the day we begin to open our domestic opportunities.”
Though Republicans derided the measure, saying it kept too much of the Outer Continental Shelf and the underlying reserves off limits to drilling, the decision to entertain expanded offshore drilling was a stark reversal for Democrats, who have supported a coastal drilling ban since 1982. They were motivated by the Republican attacks and by the view that keeping the stricter ban would be unrealistic this year. Relaxing the ban became the party’s fall-back position.
Democrats said Republicans were left frustrated because the bill robbed them of a chief line of attack in allowing Democrats to vote for new drilling in conjunction with clean energy initiatives.
“This is a classic case where in the interests of doing good politics, we also did good policy,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
But Republicans called the entire exercise political, saying Democrats were willing to consider new offshore drilling only because they were certain the bill would not become law.
“It is a Peter Pan story,” said Representative Don Young of Alaska, who led the Republican opposition to the measure. “It is a figment of the imagination. It is a political gimmick.”
Slaughter on Maddow’s show claimed she would be willing to bet her “… house and lot” that no new drilling would actually occur.
In other words, the Democrats, by allowing this bill to be voted on and to pass, get to have their cake and eat it, too.
Sometimes, it’s not caving. Sometimes, it’s winning. ++
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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