Biden Making US Better

 Since this is an election year let’s review some of the most important accomplishments of the Biden administration in the last year and how the American people were affected by it. 

In the area of prescription drug and health care costs; 15 million Americans now save $800/year on health insurance and insulin cost for seniors for seniors is now capped at $35 per month. Drug companies are now required to pay rebates to Medicare if they raise prices faster than inflation. Pharmaceutical companies now must allow Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, starting with the 10 costliest, most widely used drugs used to treat blood clots, cancers, arthritis, diabetes. The Biden administration successfully encouraged 42 states to expand Medicaid postpartum coverage from two months to 12, but not Texas. A record number of Americans now have health insurance and we’ve just had the strongest Obamacare enrollment ever.

Regarding the costs of living; inflation spurred by the pandemic has fallen 65% since last summer and gasoline prices are down more than $1.90 from its peak. Grocery inflation is at its lowest level in two years; egg prices are down a $1/dozen. Americans are saving billions of dollars a year due to crack downs on hidden junk fees in airline tickets, banking, investment advice, health insurance and apartment rentals.

In the area of employment and pay the Biden administration’s economic policies created over 14 million jobs, including 800,000 manufacturing jobs, while unemployment has stayed below 4% for 22 straight months. Biden supported unions and collective bargaining making him the most pro-union president in history. The economy is so good that the country set a record of 14.6 million applications to start new businesses. Wages, wealth and the share of working-age Americans with jobs are higher than before the pandemic. The US has had the fastest post-COVID economic recovery of G7 industrialized countries.

In only three years the Biden administration has made more progress on the climate crisis than any prior administration while lowering energy costs. The Inflation Reduction Act, provided for the largest investment in climate action ever by created 210,000 new clean energy jobs in 2023 alone. While there is much more to do Biden deserves credit for helping to secure a historic, international agreement at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels, triple renewable energy globally by 2030. The administration’s fiscal and other policies spurred hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector investment in wind, solar, electric vehicles, saving families an average of $500/year on energy costs. Biden took executive action to cut emissions across the economy, including issuing standards to reduce methane pollution.

The Biden administration made higher education more affordable by approving $127 billion in debt cancellation for 3.6 million Americans, more than any President in history even in the face of Republican-led lawsuits. Biden’s SAVE plan will cut undergraduate loan payments in half and prevent student loan balances from growing due to runaway interest. Administration policies helped 700,000 people access public service loan forgiveness programs. The administration invested $7 billion in Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Biden signed Executive Orders to protect access to abortion, contraception and the right to travel across state lines to obtain care in reaction to state abortion bans that followed the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, like here in Texas. The administration strengthened privacy protections for patients and doctors.

There’s plenty more that Biden and Democrats have done in the face or Republican obstruction, just think of how much more could be accomplished if we re-elect Biden and a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 3, 2024

Proof Republicans Lack Moral Courage

It’s astonishing to me that contrary to what Republican legislators like Senator Bryan Hughes says about his 2021 anti-abortion bill SB8, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is dead set on proving that claims that Republican passed anti-abortion laws apply even when a woman’s life, health, and future ability to have a child is at risk.

This latest episode started with Kate Cox, a 31 year old Dallas mother of two, who was delighted to learn she was pregnant with her third child then months later learned that the fetus suffers a lethal anomaly which could cause it to be born only to die within hours at best and at worst die in her uterus and a cause fatal infection that even if treated could cause to be unable to ever have another child at worst. She wants to terminate her pregnancy and while Sen. Hughes and others claim the law allows that doctors and hospitals and their lawyers say that’s not what the law says. A Travis County district judge granted a temporary restraining order allowing Mrs. Cox to terminate her nonviable pregnancy.

A.G. Paxton then sent a letter to three hospitals, threatening legal action if they allowed the abortion to be performed at their facility. Next Paxton asked the Texas Supreme Court to intervene and they have issued a stay on the temporary restraining order, meaning the existing law remains in effect so no abortion for Mrs. Cox, she’ll just have to suffer the consequences of Republican over-zealousness.

Some months ago Hughes wrote a letter to the Texas Medical Board asking for an investigation into "disturbing allegations" that patients with serious pregnancy complications were being sent home from the hospital without care. Hughes wrote "Pregnancy complications such as these should be swiftly and reasonably treated to prevent or address a medical emergency determined by the physician," asking the Texas Medical Board to issue guidance on the issue.

Paxton is the state’s lawyer and he believes that there are no conditions under which terminating a pregnancy is not a violation of Texas law. This is the same Ken Paxton who has been impeached for accepting bribes and other crimes in order to cover up his adultery and provide his mistress with a job and home in Austin. Paxton has also been indicted for violations of federal securities laws.

About half the population of Guadalupe County is represented in the Texas Senate by Dr. Donna Campbell who talks about her career as an emergency room physician and her anti-abortion stance whenever she campaigns. You’d think that a physician, a career that most of us associate with extreme compassion, would be the first to recognize that sometimes terminating a pregnancy is medically necessary. Campbell has not once made an effort to amend the state’s anti-abortion legislation to make it possible to address the complexities of pregnancy that she must know full well exists. Of course, she’s also among the majority of Senate Republicans that voted to acquit Ken Paxton in his impeachment trial even after Paxton’s former chief assistant described his efforts to encourage Paxton to step back from his dishonorable actions and dismay at having to resign and report Paxton’s behavior.

There’s a reason that maternal mortality dropped over much of the last century but has been going back up here in Texas for the last few decades. How many women will have to die, how many will have to lose their ability to have children before these Republicans who lack empathy are forced to back off even a little on their zealous application of narrow-minded law?

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 13, 2023

Overturning Roe is Hypocrisy

The big news maker last week was the draft opinion regarding the abortion case heard by the Supreme Court published by Politico. The document indicates that 5 of the 6 Republican appointees have agreed to overturn the 50 year old Roe v. Wade decision and once again allow states to make abortion a criminal offense. Had Sen. Mitch McConnell not stolen a seat by refusing to hold hearings on Pres. Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, when Justice Scalia’s death created a vacancy this decision would almost certainly been to continue the right to abortion as the law of the land.

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion includes the justification that “the domestic supply of infants” is insufficient to meet demand. This sentiment has previously been expressed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett saying that we don’t “need” abortion anymore because the supply of adoptable domestic infants cannot meet demand. I don’t see how that argument is morally sustainable.

According to Adopt US Kids, there are 117,000 children waiting to be adopted in the United States right now. So Alito and Barrett’s argument doesn’t hold up factually either.

Alito and several other conservative members of the court claim to be originalists, which they define as believing that the constitution is a dead document, in other words it means only what it meant at the time it was written and is to be understood as it would have been understood in the 1780’s. There’s a real problem with that notion, founders Alexander Hamilton and James Madison both rejected Originalism. You’ll often hear Republicans use a similar argument about government agencies they claim shouldn’t exist because it isn’t stated in the constitution. Neither is the right to travel but no one argues that Americans don’t have the right to travel within their states, or within the country, or even to other countries.

Then there’s our Firsts Amendment right to religious freedom, which this decision actually runs roughshod over. There are numerous Christian denominations, not to mention other religions that are pro-choice on a theological basis and at least as many other religious denominations that believe that abortion is a matter of individual conscience. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and the United Church of Christ are just a few of those.

In Judaism when a mother’s life is endangered by a pregnancy, it is Jewish law that the mother’s life, a life in being, takes precedent. Keep in mind that Jesus, being born a Jew, would likely accept this position since nowhere in scripture does he speak out against it. Justice Alito has essentially ruled that a pregnant Jewish woman who will risk death if the pregnancy is carried to term can be denied an abortion – against her own religious beliefs. That makes Alito and other four Justices joining him Christian supremacists. Alito has essentially declared orthodox Catholic theology to be the law of the land on abortion. Such a ruling is counter to the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment.

Alito’s draft says that a right to abortion services is not deeply rooted in this nation’s history. Women on the Supreme Court are not deeply rooted in this nation’s history either, nor are anyone but white men. The Constitution doesn’t say that women or black people can serve on the Supreme Court. By Alito’s argument apparently the founders thought only white men should ever serve on the Supreme Court. So why has he never advocated for rejecting Clarence Thomas or Amy Coney Barrett’s positions on the court.

It all boils down to hypocrisy in service to an agenda that is incompatible with democracy.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 11, 2022

More Than Abortion At Risk

I am an adoptive father and the uncle of a foster child, I have first-hand knowledge that society is not prepared to handle a sudden increase in the number of unwanted children that would be the result of allowing states like Texas to make abortion illegal. A massive increase in the number of children in the foster care system and those in homes that can’t provide three healthy meals a day is only one consequence of conservative zeal to return to the days when abortion was illegal.

In “What Roe Could Take Down With It” published in The Atlantic, Kimberly Wehle, professor of law at the University of Baltimore, outlines the very real consequences of the Supreme Court’s likely vote to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that found a woman has a right to an abortion until the fetus is viable at around 24-28 weeks of gestation.

Professor Wehle points out that the reason overturning Roe v. Wade is about more than abortion is that the legal logic which threatens it could quite easily extend to other rights. Reversing Roe v. Wade invites states to try out new laws that regulate such choices as who you can marry – miscegenation laws made inter-racial marriage illegal until the Supreme Court ruled such laws unconstitutional in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia. Also at risk is the right to choose with whom to be intimate, as homosexual acts were illegal in  several states until 2003 when the Supreme Court ruled those laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas. It was 1965 when the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that the liberty of married couples to buy and use contraceptives without government restriction is protected by the constitution. The education of one’s own children is also at risk as some states made private schools illegal until the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional in Pierce v. Society of Sisters. They are all at risk because none of these rights we are now so accustomed to are specifically stated in the constitution and the current SCOTUS majority claim to be originalists arguing that if it isn’t stated in the constitution it isn’t protected by the constitution.

Wehle says the Court identified a “constitutional ‘right to privacy’ based on the Bill of Rights; in particular the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments” reasoning they operate to shield “an intimate relation of husband and wife and their physician’s role in one aspect of that relation” from government intrusion. The “Court in Roe acknowledged that ‘the Constitution does not explicitly mention any right to privacy,’ but seized on the earlier Griswold case’s recognition of ‘a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy’ to strike down a Texas law criminalizing abortion.”

Professor Wehle goes on to list other rights and other cases which hinge on the implicit “right to privacy”  or meaning and scope of explicitly stated “liberty” a term which is nowhere defined in the constitution leaving the Court to make that determination. Many of the freedoms we currently take for granted are not specifically stated in the constitution yet many seem to believe they are. The same reasoning that currently protects a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy was used to determine that couples have the right to use contraception, get married, and decide how to educate their children.

Wehle concludes that “from a legal perspective, if Roe falls, it’s hard to see what else will still stand.” As with other arguments made by conservatives on a variety of topics they don’t seem to understand the consequences of achieving their goals.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 8, 2021

Texas Republicans Reward Snitches

As of September 1 women in Texas Republicans have essentially outlawed abortion in the state. SB8 makes it illegal to have an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy and since women are often unsure they’re pregnant before six weeks this bill essentially prohibits 85% of abortions in Texas. The five worst members of the Supreme Court of the United States, three of whom are Trump appointees, have refused to even delay the effect of the bill until it can be reviewed.

I am deeply angered that women in Texas are already suffering from losing the choice of whether or not to continue their pregnancy as I don’t see where any man has the right to control what a woman does with her body. There’s been a lot of discussion of that already and most Democrats are pro-choice so let’s put that part of this disturbing bill on the side and focus on another insidious effect of this bill.

Texas Republicans gave abortion opponents in Texas the right to sue women who seek abortions and anyone who provides assistance to them from the doctor or nurse, to the friend or family member who drives them to the clinic, or anyone who helps finance the cost of the procedure. Texas Republicans pushed this bill through the legislature over the objections of women of all ages and Democrats on both houses of the legislature. Those who snitch on their neighbors or co-workers are guaranteed a minimum of $10,000 from anyone they successfully accuse of having, providing, aiding or abetting an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy. Given that there are typically at least three people involved in an abortion, the pregnant woman, a doctor, and a nurse the snitch stands to get at least $30,000 in rewards.

There is historical precedent for this Republican legislation going back to Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Russia. The Nazis rewarded snitches who turned in Jews or anyone who hid or helped Jews flee. In Soviet Russia snitches were rewarded for informing on anyone who opposed or criticized Stalin or his policies. In Stalin’s Russian no one could be trusted as even family and friends might turn on you at any moment. As you might imagine such snitching was often abused by jealous neighbors, spurned lovers, and others with a grudge. Sociologist Jan Gross refers to such snitching as a form of ‘privatisation’ of the totalitarian state, since they enabled individuals to draw on the state’s coercive power to settle private grievances. Texas Republicans seem to want to privatize everything else so add snitching as another means.

Reliance on snitching is something that totalitarian regimes are known for. I find it interesting that my conservative neighbors refer to many liberal policies as communist and something out of Soviet Russia yet it is their restrictive policies and practices like snitching that most resemble the totalitarian Soviet state.

According to Psychology Today the term projection “is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another. For example, if someone continuously bullies and ridicules a peer about his insecurities, the bully might be projecting his own struggle with self-esteem onto the other person.”

If conservatives quack like ducks maybe they are ducks, or in this case totalitarians.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - September 8, 2021

Freedom of Reproductive Choice Left and Right

While the rate of abortions is the lowest since the early 1970’s before the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized it and about half the peak rate which occurred in 1984 Republicans aren’t satisfied. Several state legislatures have recently all but outlawed abortions. Alabama’s new law is the most restrictive only allowing exceptions "to avoid a serious health risk to the unborn child's mother," for ectopic pregnancy and if the "unborn child has a lethal anomaly."

You can tell a lot of the legislators passing such bills a truly ignorant of human reproduction. Republican state Sen. Clyde Chambliss, who pushed Alabama’s bill stated on the Senate floor that there is a "window" of time between conception and when a woman knows for certain that she's pregnant which he believes to be seven to ten days. Reality is that most women don’t know they’re pregnant for six to eight weeks and often longer.

Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Ohio all passed bills prohibiting abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, that’s six weeks. In other words by the time a woman even knows she’s pregnant these lawmakers have eliminated abortion as an option. In Missouri the governor signed into law a bill banning abortions at eight weeks of pregnancy, without exceptions in the cases of rape or incest.

Some state legislatures controlled by Democrats are expanding abortion rights and access. In Maine new state law will allow nurse practitioners to perform abortions, expanding the possible number of care providers in the state. Nevada’s legislature voted to reverse some restrictions. Vermont's legislature recognized “as a fundamental right the freedom of reproductive choice," including “rights to choose or refuse contraception or sterilization or to choose to carry a pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to obtain an abortion”—and its Republican governor won’t veto the bill.

The Illinois state House has passed a bill that, like Vermont’s, affirms reproductive freedoms and also repeals some restrictions on the books in the state. Massachusetts is considering the ROE Act, which would remove some restrictions, including a parental permission law for teens and a waiting period that isn’t currently being enforced anyway, as well as expand rights to abortion after 24 weeks in case of serious fetal abnormalities and create a safety net to ensure that abortion is treated like other medical care for women who don’t have other health coverage.

Research from around the globe shows restrictive laws don’t actually seem to reduce abortion rates. Instead, they are linked to unsafe abortions, which put women at risk of serious health problems and even death.

States that emphasize abstinence-only programs have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and teen birth. In 2003, California lawmakers instead passed the California Comprehensive Sexual Health and HIV/AIDS Prevention Education Act which forbade public schools from promoting religious doctrine or bias against people, and said that all sex education programs had to be medically accurate, age-appropriate and comprehensive. By 2005, California’s teen pregnancy rate was 75 per 1,000 teens, a more than 50 percent decline that dwarfed the corresponding national decline of 37 percent.

To this day, a large minority of teen pregnancies tend to end in abortion. But with California’s decline in teen pregnancy rates came declines in both teen births and teen abortions. Abortions, in particular, dropped from 76 per 1,000 teens in 1988 to 26 per 1,000 in 2005.

If Republicans really wanted to reduce abortions they’d improve sex ed in our public schools, instead they just pander to religious conservatives.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 31, 2019

Mitt Romney would have IUD users charged as murderers

When asked by Fox News whether he would have supported a "personhood" constitutional amendment, Mitt Romney replied, "Absolutely."

Now I realize that many readers are pro-life but this is by far the most radical stand of any of the Republican contenders. "Personhood" amendments are now being considered in states like Mississippi, Florida, and Ohio, and if passed would elevate a fertilized human egg to the status of a legal person. That means no more IUDs or the morning-after pill and if a woman used them she could be charged with murder. In-vitro fertilization would be illegal because is creates fertilized eggs that would have to be disposed of at some point. Abortions would be considered murder and there would be no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest and if a woman’s pregnancy endangers a her life doctors would have to just let her die.

Would a class action suit be filed on behalf of all those eggs in refrigeration at fertility clinics around the country to force their mothers to carry them to term? Would anyone disposing of those fertilized eggs be prosecuted for murder?

So we now have a leading contender for the Republican party’s presidential nomination on the record in favor of radically changing that status quo regarding fertility clinics and  classifying some forms of birth control as murder. Is Mitt Romney really the man you want to be next President of the United States?

Are you sure that Republican Party values really align with yours?

Lately I’ve heard from quite a few well-meaning people that say they vote Republican because the party generally espouses their values. These conversations have led me to wonder to which values they’re referring. Do they mean carving a hole in education budgets across the state such that a whole generation of Texans receives an inferior education? After all Texas already spends less per student on education than almost every state but Mississippi.

Do the values of these well-meaning people require such extensive cuts to the state's Medicaid program that seniors, in need of daily medical care which their families are unable to provide, be thrown out on the street in the name of low taxes for millionaires?

While one may argue over when life begins based on one’s interpretation of the bible or science or some combination thereof; are the values of these well-meaning people really such that making abortions almost impossible to get for low income women more important than the non-abortion related women’s health care services provided by Planned Parenthood which are 97% of its budget?

Are the profits of Halliburton and other energy companies valued more highly than the lives and health of people who live near virtually unregulated gas drilling sites where you can ignite the water from your kitchen faucet with a match? All these and more are brought to us by the Republican Party of Texas whose values you say align more closely with yours, I’d like to know if you’re sure about that?

Letter to the editor responding to calls to defund Planned Parenthood

In Beverly Nuckols letter of March 28 she seems quite concerned that her tax dollars shouldn’t be spent on safe, legal medical procedures for women. Republicans in Congress want to deny government employees insurance coverage for that same medical procedure because tax dollars pay for that insurance.

I want them consider something similar for men. As a tax payer I am offended that my tax dollars and insurance premiums go to pay for penile implants and erectile dysfunction drugs for 70 year old unmarried men.

In addition since Ms. Nuckols will certainly justify her objection to abortions on religious grounds then to be logically consistent she should consider that if God intended everyone to be able to procreate then they would, therefore since some men can’t it must be because God intended it that way and we have no business intervening with modern medicine. Of course by extension then all of modern medicine is questionable. Should we stop repairing defective heart valves in newborns? What about surgery to correct cleft palates and hare lips? Should we stop treating cancer?

I’m 81 years old and I’ve seen a lot over the years, I find Ms. Nuckols desire to force her version of morality down the throats of everyone else particularly offensive.

Letter to the editor responding to calls to defund Planned Parenthood

In his letter “Planned Parenthood should not receive taxpayer money” Robert Cornwell urges defunding Planned Parenthood because they offer safe, legal medical procedures. Apparently Mr. Cornwell either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of reproductive health services to women who would otherwise have no such care at all.

Planned Parenthood programs help to prevent nearly one million unintended pregnancies each year, almost half of which would otherwise end in abortion.  For every public dollar invested in family planning, $3.74 is saved in Medicaid-related costs. That’s savings to both federal and state governments.

Planned Parenthood and similar programs provide lifesaving and preventive care to millions of women. In 2009 alone they performed 2.2 million Pap tests and 2.3 million breast exams. If Mr. Cornwell gets his way more women will experience unintended pregnancies and face potentially life-threatening cancer and other diseases that could have been prevented.

According to a January 2011 CBS/New York Times survey found that by a margin of 67 percent to 27 percent, Americans oppose cuts for health care and education as a means of reducing the deficit.

Finally, the undercover videotape session Mr. Cornwell refers to was produced by a group that even Glenn Beck doesn’t find credible so consider the source before passing judgment.