Ron Paul(R-TX) May Be a Useful Tool, But He is a Crackpot

Ron Paul(R-TX) May Be a Useful Tool, But He is a Crackpot

Can we talk? Ron Paul is not a charming oddball with a few peculiar notions. He's not merely "out of the mainstream." Ron Paul is a full bore crank. In fact he's practically the dictionary definition of a crank: a person who has a single obsessive, all-encompassing idea for how the world should work and is utterly blinded to the value of any competing ideas or competing interests.

This obsessive idea has, at various times in his career, led him to: denounce the Civil Rights Act because it infringed the free-market right of a monolithic white establishment to immiserate blacks; dabble in gold buggery and advocate the elimination of the Federal Reserve, apparently because the global economy worked so well back in the era before central banks; suggest that the border fence is being built to keep Americans from leaving the country; claim that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional and should be dismantled; mount repeated warnings that hyperinflation is right around the corner; insist that global warming is a gigantic hoax; hint that maybe the CIA helped to coordinate the 9/11 attacks; oppose government-sponsored flu shots; and allege that the UN wants to confiscate our guns.

This isn't the biography of a person with one or two unusual hobbyhorses. It's not something you can pretend doesn't matter. This is Grade A crankery, and all by itself it's reason enough to want nothing to do with Ron Paul. But of course, that's not all. As we've all known for the past four years, you can layer on top of this Paul's now infamous newsletters, in which he condoned a political strategy consciously designed to appeal to the worst strains of American homophobia, racial paranoia, militia hucksterism, and new-world-order fear-mongering. And on top of that, you can layer on the fact that Paul is plainly lying about these newsletters and his role in them.

Now, balanced against that you have the fact that Paul opposes the War on Drugs and supports a non-interventionist foreign policy. But guess what? Even there, he's a crank. Even if you're a hard-core non-interventionist yourself, you probably think World War II was a war worth fighting. But not Ron Paul. He thinks we should have just minded our own damn business. And even if you're a hardcore opponent of our current drug policy — if you think not just that marijuana should be legalized, not just that hard drugs should be decriminalized, but that all illicit drugs should be fully legalized — I'll bet you still think that maybe we should retain some regulations on a few of the worst drugs. They're pretty dangerous, after all, and no matter how much you hate the War on Drugs you might have a few qualms about a global marketing behemoth like RJ Reynolds having free rein to advertise and sell anything it wants, anywhere it wants, in any way it wants. But not Ron Paul. As near as I can tell, he just wants everything legalized, full stop.

Bottom line: Ron Paul is not merely a "flawed messenger" for these views. He's an absolutely toxic, far-right, crackpot messenger for these views. This is, granted, not Mussolini-made-the-trains-run-on-time levels of toxic, but still: if you truly support civil liberties at home and non-interventionism abroad, you should run, not walk, as fast as you can to keep your distance from Ron Paul. He's not the first or only person opposed to pre-emptive wars, after all, and his occasional denouncements of interventionism are hardly making this a hot topic of conversation among the masses. In fact, to the extent that his foreign policy views aren't simply being ignored, I'd guess that the only thing he's accomplishing is to make non-interventionism even more of a fringe view in American politics than it already is. Crackpots don't make good messengers.

 Paul just seems revolutionary to some young liberals because they don't remember when the far Right was full of isolationists conservatives. To be a modern conservatives means to put the U.S. military into whatever situation they feel like on any particular day. Other than his isolationism which is taken as being a promoter of peace, Paul is just an anti-American extremist like most modern conservatives.

Wisconsin Right-wing Nut Governor Scott Walker Thinks Corporate Taxes Can Never be Low Enough and he is Willing to Kill Women to Prove It

Wisconsin Right-wing Nut Governor  Scott Walker Thinks Corporate Taxes Can Never be Low Enough and he is Willing to Kill Women to Prove It

First he gutted worker's rights [1], then slashed state education funding [2] and dumbed-down sex ed [3]. Next on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's hit list? Breast and cervical cancer screenings for women. Come January 1, Wisconsinites who rely on Planned Parenthood to access free cancer screenings may be out of luck.

The Wisconsin Well Woman Program [4] is an 17-year-old state service created to ensure that women ages 45 to 64 who lack health insurance can access preventive health screenings. It is administered by the Department of Health Services and provides referrals and screenings for breast cancer, cervical cancer, and multiple sclerosis at no cost. The state currently uses a number of contractors to coordinate and provide those services, including Planned Parenthood. But now, in a move that could leave many women in the state without access to the program, the Walker government is ending Planned Parenthood's contract.

In four Wisconsin counties, Planned Parenthood is the only health care provider currently contracted as a coordinator for the cancer screenings. Coordinators evaluate women for eligibility, enroll them in the program, and then connect them to health care providers that can perform the exams. The coordinators also do community outreach, letting women know that there are options for preventative care even if they don't have health insurance. Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin has been a contractor since the program began—including during the terms of previous GOP governors Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum—but the group recently learned that its contract is being terminated at the end of the month.

Beth Kaplan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health Services, told Mother Jones that no decision has been made on the contract and would not comment on why it might not be continued. But Tanya Atkinson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, says they were told that the state is cutting them out of the program. "They have very clearly stated that they were ending the contract with us," she says. [UPDATE: Walker himself has confirmed [5] that the state is ending its contract with Planned Parenthood.]

Atkinson says the DHS cut is politically motivated; as far as she knows, her group was the only service provider whose contract was not renewed. The move puts in question what will happen to the more than 1,000 women that access the Well Woman Program through Planned Parenthood in Winnebago, Fond du Lac, Sheboygan, and Outagamie counties every year. Doctors found 15 cases of cervical and breast cancer in the 1,260 women screened in those counties in 2010—cases that likely would not have been detected if women didn't have access to the Well Woman Program. The county health officers in two of those counties have already issued statements decrying the state for targeting Planned Parenthood for the cut and for risking the health of their residents.

"If it's not Planned Parenthood, then who's going to coordinate? Where do women go?" Atkinson asks. "We don't have any indication at this point."

If Walker goes through with the cut, women like Laurie Seim might not get the services they need. Two years ago, the 52-year-old Seim discovered a lump in her breast and started feeling feverish and sick. Even though she had a part-time job as a medical assistant, she didn't have health insurance and had never had a mammogram. The doctor she worked for sent her to the Well Woman Program coordinator at the Outagamie office of Planned Parenthood. She was able to get a mammogram the next day as well as an ultrasound, and both were covered by the program. Thankfully, she learned she had a cyst, not cancer. But without the program, she says, she probably wouldn't have gotten that care.

"I didn't have to worry about anything. It was such a godsend," Seim says. "If I hadn't been referred to that program, I don't know what I would have done." She worked in the medical field but still didn't know how to navigate the system. "Well Woman was there for me."

Just another day among the fake patriots who call themselves conservatives. They honestly believe in having a dog-eat-dog survival of the lucky society. If you have health problems and cannot afford care, conservative Republicans believe you should die. They proved that to the entire nation when they applauded a question during the Republican debates about letting someone without health insurance die. 

How OWS Has Exposed the Militarization of US Law Enforcement

How OWS Has Exposed the Militarization of US Law Enforcement

As the number of Occupy Wall Street arrests nears 1,000, instances of police brutality continue to pile up. Felix Rivera-Pitre was punched in the face in New York during a march through the city’s financial district; Ryan Hadar was dragged out of the street by his thumbs at Occupy San Francisco; and at Occupy Boston, members of Veterans for Peace were shoved to the ground and dragged away for chanting and peacefully occupying a local park.

These efforts to intimidate the protesters are symptoms of three decades of policies that have militarized civilian law enforcement. Sgt. Shamar Thomas, a U.S. marine at the Occupy Wall Street protests, was so appalled by the behavior of the NYPD that he loudly confronted a group of 30 officers, shouting at them:

    "This is not a war zone. These are unarmed people. It does not make you tough to hurt these people. If you want to go fight, go to Iraq or Afghanistan. Stop hurting these people, man, why y’all doing this to our people? Why are y’all gearing up like this is war? There are no bullets flying out here."

Police repression in America is hardly new. Low-income neighborhoods, communities of color and political activists have always had to deal with unneccassary shows of force by some police officers. Thanks to a populist uprising threatening a status quo that benefits the top tier of American society to the detriment of the bottom 99 percent, many Americans for the first time are witnessing the U.S. police state in action.

As Occupation Spreads, So Does the Police State

A clear pattern has emerged in the response to occupations throughout the country, from San Francisco to Denver, involving midnight raids by heavily armed paramilitary units of riot police deployed to enforce park curfews.

Protesters at Occupy San Francisco are familiar with the routine. They have endured multiple late-night police raids on their encampment in Justin Herman Plaza, the most brutal of which took place Sunday, Oct. 16. Minutes before midnight and with the approval of Mayor Ed Lee (who is currently running for reelection and claims to be supportive of the movement's overall message), 70 police officers decked out in full riot gear marched into the encampment to enforce a 10pm curfew. They dismantled tents, tarps, the medical station and the kitchen, along with some personal belongings, all of which were loaded onto Department of Public Works trucks.

Some 200 protesters resisted peacefully, locking arms to prevent the police invasion, which was met with a frighteningly violent response. According to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, one protester received a lengthy beat-down for duct-taping his body to a pole inside the camp. The police allegedly "ripped him off the pole, threw him to the ground and struck him in the head and ribs. When he left by ambulance a few hours later, he appeared to be convulsing or seizing," reported the Bay Guardian.

Protesters using their bodies to block the DPW trucks from leaving were dragged out of the street, some by their fingers and thumbs. Those who locked arms to form a human chain were pulled apart and thrown onto the sidewalk. 

America's police departments might want to ask themselves - what are you going to do when they come for you. Most police in the US belong to unions. Who is going to defend your rights to organize. Who is going to defend your right to collective bargaining. Who is going to look out for your right to decent health care insurance. The very same people you're treating like garbage. By all means protect life and garb anyone you see do something like throw a brick threw a window, but otherwise ask yourself why you're acting like the goon enforcers of some despotic regime.

B-I-N-G-Oh Hell No: Judge Rules That Alabama Republicans Acted With Racist Intent to Suppress Voter Turnout

The Taliban Comes To Texas Dressed Up as Republicans

The Taliban Comes To Texas Dressed Up as Conservative Republicans

Before I met with Texas State Representative Dan Flynn last month during Texas’ pro-choice lobby day, I truly believed that even the most passionate anti-choice conservative couldn’t look me in the face and tell me they didn’t really care whether I got the reproductive health care I needed. Who would seriously tell me their religious beliefs are more important than making sure hundreds of thousands of women just like me—women with high-risk HPV--don’t develop cervical cancer?

But like I said, that was before I sat in front of Rep. Flynn, in his Austin office next to his model airplanes and elect-Dan-Flynn gum, and told him how I’d lost my job and my health insurance and needed regular, affordable pap smears to keep an eye on my pre-cancerous cervical dysplasia. I told him Planned Parenthood could provide low-cost paps, breast exams and contraceptives to keep me healthy despite my lack of insurance, and I believed they should continue to be funded by government family planning dollars. He scoffed, waving around a handful of papers—spreadsheets and maps, it looked like—and told me that Planned Parenthood was nothing but a tax-evading abortion machine (he knew because he used to be a bank examiner and had heard some things from some people) and there were so many other options besides Planned Parenthood in Texas. I should and could go to one of those, he told me, so we could spread some of the wealth around to these smaller providers. It would be very easy, he said.

I asked him if he could give me that list he had in his hand, the long list of places I could get low-cost reproductive health care without insurance near my home in Dallas. He glanced at the list and rattled off some names, something about Dallas Emergency Services and Dallas County Hospital District. He didn’t exactly wait for me to get out my pen and pad. I filed out of Flynn’s office with the rest of the women I’d teamed up with for lobby day feeling surprised and disappointed. But I still wanted (needed!) to know where those low-cost health centers were that Flynn had referenced, because I knew the Texas Legislature to be hell-bent on cutting the family planning funds that keep Planned Parenthood and clinics like it afloat.

Planned Parenthood or not, I’d still need well-woman exams, birth control pills and suchlike, and I wanted to know where I could get these things if I had to spend weeks or months scraping by on a freelancer’s salary without health insurance. So here’s what I did: I spent my own time, money and energy trying to find a health care clinic that anti-choice conservatives, legislators and organizations would approve of—namely, to find a Federally Qualified Health Center or “look-alike” center that, by virtue of federal grant funding, cannot provide abortion services except in cases of rape, incest or threat to a mother’s life, as dictated by the 36-year-old Hyde Amendment. (I know—that amendment also applies to Planned Parenthood, which only uses private, non-taxpayer funds for its abortion services at separate, privately-funded locations, but we’re talking about conservative ideology, not logic, so just go with me here.)

But I thought, I’ll play this game. If it turns out I was wrong—and I really thought maybe I could be, because how could it seriously happen that “pro-life” Texans didn’t want me to get cancer screenings?—I would be the first to admit that you can take Planned Parenthood out of the equation and still find easily accessible, low-cost reproductive health care in a sprawling metropolitan area like Dallas. But I wasn’t wrong. I was, maddeningly, right. Considering the rate at which conservatives are defunding family planning in my state, and for that matter, across the country, I’m very sorry about that. All of this is an ideological, not fiscally conservative, battle. After all, family planning saves taxpayers $4 for every $1 spent. But I was trying to work around family planning dollars, since conservatives seem to think they go straight to gleeful baby-killing cocktail hours, and stick with straight-up FQHC's. If they’re lucky, Dallas women will be told what I was told: an appointment at an anti-choicer-approved FQHC might be available in May if I called back in three weeks—at a location two cities away and five miles from the closest bus stop.

Or women can call Planned Parenthood, like I did, at lunch time on a Friday, and be told that an afternoon appointment including a full pelvic and breast exam is available that same day for about $100 at a location a few yards from a major public transportation hub that I could easily reach in a half-hour or so. But I’m getting ahead of myself. You see, I first had to do a little divination to figure out where exactly anti-choicers wanted me to get my health care (besides not Planned Parenthood), since I couldn’t actually get any of them to pass along that list of their approved providers to me. First thing in the morning, the day after I met with Rep. Dan Flynn, I called and e-mailed his office. After a day or so, they got back to me and advised I contact the anti-choice religious groupTexas Alliance For Life for a list of alternatives to Planned Parenthood. I e-mailed the Alliance on March 10:

Hi, TX Alliance for Life - I was referred to you by the office of Rep. Dan Flynn. I’m looking for a comprehensive list of alternatives to Planned Parenthood–when I visited with Rep. Flynn this week he referenced a document that appeared to be just such a thing. Karah Carr, a legislative aide for Rep. Flynn, tells me the Alliance for Life provided it. I was wondering if I could get a copy of the same list? Thanks! Andrea

So, what’s today? April the something? I haven’t heard back from the Alliance yet. I’ve even been Tweeting at both the Alliance and Rep. Flynn asking for that list of providers that can they believe can give me the same or better care as Planned Parenthood.

But, nada.

I know Flynn and his conservative counterparts were very busy over the weekend deciding which Texans deserve health care (hint: it’s not women of reproductive age) but I hoped that at least in Flynn’s passion for defunding family planning, he’d develop a passion for helping women find health care providers he approved of. I was wrong about that one.

I posted about my travails on my personal blog, where I have a number of anti-choice trolls who are always more than happy to share their wealth of knowledge with me. There, someone from another anti-choice group eventually commented and told me they wouldn’t mind if I went to a Federally Qualified Health Center or “look-alike” center that offers sliding fee scales. And look, said the "pro-life" Texan, there are seven such centers in Dallas! So that’s what I did: Last Friday morning, I went out of my way to find a doctor based on the fact that some people have a personal dislike of Planned Parenthood for providing abortions--a safe, common and legal medical procedure.

It hardly felt like easy-access, low-cost health care. It felt more like coercion, and it was a hassle, and it forced me to make decisions about my own body and health care based on what other people—people who never met me, who are not medical professionals—think I should be doing based on their religious beliefs.

I found that list of FQHC’s—I am privileged to have a flexible work schedule, home phone and home internet access, so I didn’t have to take time off work to go to the public library and use a pay phone, and I didn’t have to sneak around on a conservative, religious or abusive family or partner--and started making calls. Most places I telephoned did not provide reproductive health care and instead focused on providing low-income housing, job training and addiction-recovery programs. A homeless shelter on the FQHC list did tell me I could get a free pap smear if I could prove I was homeless. I then got sidetracked looking into something called Project Access, a low-cost program that helps uninsured people who don’t qualify for Medicaid—but because I made more than about $20,000 last year as an unmarried woman without kids, I don’t qualify for that, either.

And the Texas Breast And Cervical Cancer Services, which is supposed to provide low-cost screenings for Texas women? It referred me to Planned Parenthood. So that was a no-go.

Back to the phones: a clinic close-ish to my home had no receptionist and a full voicemail. Another receptionist laughed at me because I’d been given the number for the county hospital front desk and told me to call a place called Los Barrios Unidos Community Clinic. When I called Los Barrios, I got an individual’s voice mail and had to take down another number to a switchboard, after which I was transferred to another voicemail that said the women’s health care folks would get back to me in 24 hours if I left my phone number. They’ve yet to call me. Later in the morning, I finally got through to the Los Barrios clinic in Grand Prairie, which is a western suburb of Dallas. They had appointments open in May, potentially, if I could call them back the morning of April 25th. There, a pap smear would cost me as little as $30, but maybe more depending on my income.

I made my last call to a Planned Parenthood clinic in central Dallas. The receptionist there told me they could schedule me that same afternoon for a full pelvic and breast exam. It’d be about $100, but there was a sliding scale. Without Planned Parenthood and family planning funding that funds actual medical centers—not crisis pregnancy centers or adoption agencies, as may happen in Texas after this year’s budget--poor, uninsured and under-insured women in my city do not generally have access to quality reproductive health care in any real way. They sit on waiting lists for weeks and months, and that’s if they can take time off work to do what I did: spend a morning surfing the internet, finding phone numbers and addresses of health clinics and hospitals, calling them only to be put on hold, laughed at or hung up on, and if they do find the a clinic, leaving a message in hopes of getting a return call to schedule appointment.

I’m not saying I tried my absolute hardest to find a reproductive health care provider that Texas anti-choice conservatives approve of. I could have called back the clinics I had to leave messages at, the ones that promised they’d get back to me in 24 hours. I could have spent another morning calling clinics in Fort Worth, Denton, Waco or Oklahoma City, to see if one of them could get me in for an appointment in the next two months. Of course, to visit those places, I’d be spending in gas what I’d be spending to go to a local Planned Parenthood here in Dallas. So there wouldn’t really be any money savings, there’d just be conscience-savings on the part of people who don’t really want to hear or care about my personal health unless I’m pregnant or might be pregnant.

Anti-choicers like Flynn and “pro-life” activists want me and women like me to jump through these hoops not because it's medically safer for us to go somewhere other than Planned Parenthood, but because they don't want women hanging out with anybody who provides a safe, legal and common medical procedure. And for what it's worth, I imagine the anti-choice folks who told me to seek out an FQHC should know this: FQHC's do provide referrals to abortion providers at their discretion, even though they don't provide the procedure on-site.

Of course, once you get to the next level, here--after anti-choicers have first told you they don't want to fund the abortion industry with taxpayer dollars--then it magically becomes about some pseudo- socialist ideal about spreading the health care access around, just like Rep. Dan Flynn told me in his office last month. Suddenly, all those things they told you about the abortionists and the dead babies goes out the window, because really, it's about making sure the little guys get their fair slice of the pie.

Nobody knows these two excuses—barring taxpayer funding for abortion and spreading the health care wealth around--are straight-up lies better than the anti-choice movement members themselves. There's a reason why anti-choice legislators and activists are so strong on these two talking points: they're simply, plainly, not true. Taxpayer funding for abortion does not exist. It hasn't existed for thirty-six years thanks to the Hyde Amendment. And we need only to look to Nebraska, where five babies have died so far this year because conservative lawmakers do not allow hospitals to care for undocumented immigrants, to know that spreading the health care wealth around to everyone is a total farce. Besides, wasn’t Jesus a capitalist, anyway?

Why do conservative have such deep paranoid fears of the Taliban. Their social and cultural agenda are so much alike. The Taliban and conservative Republicans are kindred spirits who think it best the world go back in time to the 17th century - a time where men and a government run by men owned and controlled every woman's uterus.

Paul Ryan’s ‘Compassionate’ Budget Would Gut The Food Safety Net

This so-called “compassionate” plan would double health-care costs for seniors, endanger vital Medicaid services, and likely increase taxes on the middle-class to finance tax cuts for the rich. But it would also undermine another important part of the social safety net: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program...

What is Ryan and the conservative vision of America's future - a dog eat dog world. An America that is you're lucky fighting the greed, malice, selfishness and complete lack of concern for your fellow citizens, Ryan and conservatives will give you a can of dog food.