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Salt Lake County Republican Convention Update

April 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Chad Bennion talks with SLC delegates prior to the Salt Lake County Republican Party Convention. Bennion was elected chair.

Chad Bennion talks with SLC delegates prior to the Salt Lake County Republican Party Convention. Bennion was elected chair.

Saturday was the Salt Lake County Republican Party’s organizing convention. I attended as a delegate and also ran for one of thirty spots on the State Central Committee of the Utah Republican Party.

As conventions go, this one was pretty blase. We were electing leadership, but none of the races were expected to be close, and expectations were not exceeded.

Leadership Election Results:

Chad Bennion replaces outgoing County Party Chair Julie Dole over energetic newcomer Mike Livesy, who I am sure we’ll continue to see in Republican politics. He’s young, financially independent, articulate, and has time, a great combination for the politically interested.

Suzanne Mulet is number two at the county party at vice chair, while Michelle Hunt was elected Secretary in the closest race of the day. While Bennion and Mulet each won with over 70% of the vote, Hunt’s margin over Gary Welch was smaller with only 58% of the vote.

Also selected, as I mentioned earlier, were thirty State Central Committee members. Delegates voted thirty of fifty-five candidates to the State Central Committee, including the following:

Sean D. Reyes
Julie Dole
Chad Bennion
Gary Ott
Richard Snelgrove
James Evans
Marco Diaz
Cherilyn Eagar
Ben Soholt
Janene Gourley
Tifanie Pulley
Fred Cox
Rob Anderson
Merlynn Newbold
Alan Crooks
Daniel Thatcher
Rick Votaw
Christy Achziger
Michelle Hunt
Barbara Stallone
Mike Livsey
Lyle Decker
Gary Welch
Melvin Nimer
Phil Conder
Austin Linford
David Pyne
Daniel Burton
Steve Harmsen
Julie Warburton
Helen Redd

Because Bennion, one of the thirty elected to the State Central Committee, as chair gets an automatic seat on the State Central Committee, Helen Redd and Michelle Mumford flipped a coin for the last spot. Redd won the toss.

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Publius Online is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, a month-long quest to post every day (I know…I’ve missed a few days). Each day should match a letter of the alphabet. Today is the letter R, as in Republican.

 

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Murder? The Gosnell trial and media silence

April 15, 2013 by 2 Comments
Kermit Gosnell photographed following his arrest

Kermit Gosnell photographed following his arrest (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you’ve not heard about Gosnell, I recommend you google it. According to Wikipedia (I know, the lazy man’s research tool):

Kermit Barron Gosnell is an American medical doctor who ran two women’s health clinics in Philadelphia between 1972 and 2011, and as of April 2013, is on trial for first and third degree murder, illegal prescribing of drugs, and related offenses.

It’s a very sterilized description. It gets more gruesome, though, as you start clicking links:

  • One woman died when an unlicensed employee in the clinic over-sedated her to keep her out until Gosnell, out of the clinic at the time, arrived. She was a healthy 41-year old. 
  • It’s reported that “Gosnell has been named in at least 46 malpractice suits, including one over the death of a 22-year-old mother who died of sepsis and a perforated uterus in 2000. Many others also involve perforated uteruses. Gosnell sometimes sewed up the injury without telling women their uteruses had been perforated,[.]“
  • According to page 87 of the Grand Jury report, Gosnell would charge up to $3,000 for abortions at 30 weeks, six weeks after the legal limit in Pennsylvania, when fetuses have become viable outside the womb. To give some context, a friend of our family’s recently gave birth at 20 weeks and while the child is in intensive care, it is alive and will be well.
  • According to page 23 of  the Presentment of the Grand Jury, “Gosnell’s staff testified that they often witnessed Gosnell killing large, late-term babies whom they had observed breathing and moving.”

And here is where it gets disturbing. What follows may make you squeamish and explains why Gosnell’s clinics have been given the infamous nickname “House of Horrors.” All are directly quoted from either the Presentment or the Grand Jury report:

  • According to an ultrasound, the 17-year old mother was 29.4 weeks pregnant. Gosnell induced labor and sedated the mother, who delivered a baby boy. Cross saw [the baby boy] breathe and move. Gosnell dismissed Cross’s observations, telling her, “it’s the baby’s reflexes. It’s not really moving.” Cross told us that the baby was 18 to 19 inches long and nearly the size of her own newborn daughter, who was six pounds, six ounces at birth. Even Gosnell commented on [the baby boy's] size, joking “this baby is big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop.” Cross testified that she saw “the doctor just slit the neck” and place the remains in a clear plastic shoe box for disposal.
  • The search team discovered red biohazard bags containing the remains of 47 fetuses, which were turned over to the medical examiner. One was ”Baby Boy B,” found frozen in a plastic spring-water jug [...]. The medical examiner determined that this baby had a gestational age of at least 28 weeks. Kareema Cross testified that she saw Williams [an employee of Gosnell] cut the neck of Baby C, who had been moving and breathing for approximately 20 minutes. Gosnell had delivered the baby and put it on a counter while he suctioned the placenta from the mother. Williams called Cross  [an employee of Gosnell] over to look at the baby because it was breathing and moving its arms when Williams pulled on them. After touching the baby, Williams slit its neck. When asked why Williams had killed the baby, Cross answered: Because the baby, I guess, because the baby was moving and breathing. And she see Dr. Gosnell do it so many times, I guess she felt, you know, she can do it. It’s okay.
  • Ashley Baldwin testified that she heard a baby crying in the large procedure room (the one used for later-term abortions) and saw it moving. She said Lynda Williams summoned Dr. Gosnell, who then went into the procedure room where the baby was. Ashley testified that Dr. Gosnell was the only person in the room with the baby, that he came out of the room and put the baby in the waste bin, and that she saw an incision. Kareema Cross testified that Ashley had called her over because she had heard the baby crying; Cross said that she heard this baby “whine” while Dr. Gosnell was alone in the procedure room with the baby. Based on the testimony of the neonatology expert, we believe this baby must have been at least 23 weeks of age and, because it cried more than once, probably older. This baby was born alive, and consistent with the medical guidelines and standards cited by the neonatology expert should have been resuscitated. Instead, it was killed.

A lot of issues are difficult.  Ask two Republicans or two Democrats for their take on immigration reform or gay marriage, and you’re likely to find they disagree. They are not clear cut issues.

Abortion, however,  is not and should not be one of those issues. A woman’s right to choose whether she has a baby should begin, and end, at the point when she may choose to engage in consensual sexual relations. Rape, incest, and danger to the mother’s life aside, it’s difficult to find a gray area for abortion.

In fact, not only is it difficult to find, but the clarity of that distinction has been covered by advocates such as Planned Parenthood–which recently argued “against a state law that would protect babies born alive after a botched abortion from being left to die, or worse yet, killed. She[, the Planned Parent lobbyist] was asked about Planned Parenthood’s position on whether an infant born in this situation should receive medical care, she repeatedly testified, “That decision should be between the patient and the health care provider.”

Lest we be confused, we’re talking a baby that is alive and breathing on the operating table and whether it should live is a decision “between patient and the health care provider” says Planned Parenthood. Not surprisingly, Planned Parenthood has revised their position in the wake of public outrage that they would advocate the death of infants that survive abortion.

Which  turns back to the question here: why are we drawing a distinction from a life in utero and the life delivered?

But the question remains: How can killing a newborn infant be illegal and shocking to the collective conscience, yet ending that same life moments, days or weeks before be perfectly legal and socially acceptable as long as the baby is still in the womb? There is no logical answer.

Aside from how a baby receives food and oxygen, what changes occur to make the baby human out of the womb but something other than human the second before? Does the baby’s brain magically begin activity; does his or her heartbeat suddenly begin; does the baby abruptly begin moving on his or her own after birth? No, of course not. A baby possesses all of these qualities of life in utero.

It’s a tragedy, but perhaps more tragic is the appalling lack of media coverage the trial has received.

A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months. The exception is when Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segment on Meet the Press meant to foment outrage over an anti-abortion rights law in some backward red state.

The Washington Post has not published original reporting on this during the trial andThe New York Times saw fit to run one original story on A-17 on the trial’s first day. They’ve been silent ever since, despite headline-worthy testimony.

As Kirstin Powers puts it, it only took Rush Limbaugh to attack Sandra Fluke for women’s groups and the media to work into a frenzy, but the late term abortions of viable infants has been met with media silence. “The deafening silence of too much of the media, once a force for justice in America, is a disgrace.”

Publius Online is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, a month-long quest to post every day (I know…I’ve missed a few days). Each day should match a letter of the alphabet. Today is the letter M, as in Murder.

 

 

 

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Can idealism save the Grand Old Party?

April 10, 2013 by 2 Comments

I is for idealism, which may very much be the future of the GOP, if it is to regain relevancy.

 

For 37 years, Ron Paul was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Largely ineffective there, he earned the nickname Dr. No for his unwillingness to vote for government spending. It wasn’t until he ran for president, though, that he really hit his stride and reawakened interest in a national libertarian movement.

Now, Congress and Presidential campaigns behind him, Paul is almost more popular now than when he was in office. With his son, Senator Rand Paul, taking the baton, speaking out against war and the growth of government and regularly mentioned as a possible contender for the GOP nomination in 2016, libertarianism (little ‘l’) is coming out from the shadows and, to paraphrase Politico, going mainstream.

Could it save the Republican Party?

With post-mortem of the 2012 election continuing six months after the polls close, it’s clear that Republicans are taking a close look at what it takes to win an election, and whether the White House will be attainable in the foreseeable future.

Led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), libertarians hope to become a dominant wing of the GOP by tapping into a potent mix of war weariness, economic anxiety and frustration with federal overreach in the fifth year of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The country’s continuing fixation on fiscal issues, especially spending and debt, allows them to emphasize areas of agreement with conservative allies who are looking for ways to connect with Republicans who aren’t passionate about abortion or same-sex marriage. A Democratic administration ensures consensus on the right that states should get as much power as possible.

Senator Rand Paul filibusters from the Senate floor in March of 2013.

Senator Rand Paul filibusters from the Senate floor in March of 2013.

Libertarianism is no new member of the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan famously stated that “libertarianism is the heart and soul of conservatism.” In the years since his 1980 election, though, the influence of evangelicals have pushed their own brand of big government into the forefront of the Republican Party, and libertarians have been largely left in the wings.

However, America has changed over the last generation. Whether it’s the war on drugs/poverty/terrorism/marriage–Americans are tired of the government telling them what they should, or shouldn’t do, and they are leery of the secrecy and expanse of a government that has colluded with Wall Street for big “bailouts” while compiling kill lists for drone hunter/killers.

When Senator Paul took to the Senate floor to filibuster the nomination of John Brennan as Director of the CIA, activists and individuals on both sides of the political spectrum applauded. As Harper’s Magazine observed

The antiwar left saw the filibuster as a challenge to the violence and the innocent dead left in the drone program’s wake. The antigovernment right rallied around Paul’s pointed question about whether a hypothetical Hellfire missile might just leave a crater where your neighborhood Starbucks once stood. Rush Limbaugh called him the future. Code Pink activists brought him boxes of chocolates. #StandWithRand was, for a moment, the most popular Twitter topic on the planet.

But can the popularity last? Can the anti-statist movement shift the Republican Party?  Can idealism trump the establishment?

It’s an open question, but one that could hold the future of the Republican Party. For years Republicans have talked a good game, promising less government, then blithely creating programs that expand government’s reach and cost. For example, Medicare Part D, one of the largest expansions of government prior to the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) received strong Republican support, including from conservatives like Congressman Denny Hastert and Senator Orrin Hatch.

But not anymore: with continued high unemployment and growth failing to return to pre-recession levels, Americans are starting to question whether a government that promises the world and delivers higher taxes and fewer jobs is a government “for the people.” Obamacare begins to take full effect in 2014, and already businesses are cutting workers hours to part-time levels to avoid providing mandated healthcare. It’s cheaper to pay a financial penalty.

And so, the rise of an idealistic view of government, where the government that serves best is that which weighs on us the least.

Can it work? Will it save the Republican Party?

Publius Online is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, a month-long quest to post every day. Each day should match a letter of the alphabet. Today is the letter I, as in Idealism.

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H is for Hit Squads from the CIA

April 9, 2013 by 5 Comments

The Way of the Knife

A new book released today takes a look at the CIA’s shifting role from that of intelligence gathering (aka “spying”) to more direct action through targeted killings, through drone strikes, hit squads, or other clandestine action. The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by journalist Mark Mazzetti reveals a world not unlike John le Carre‘s dark universe of “scalp hunters.”

From the Amazon summary:

The most momentous change in American warfare over the past decade has taken place away from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, in the corners of the world where large armies can’t go. The Way of the Knife is the untold story of that shadow war: a campaign that has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies and lowered the bar for waging war across the globe. America has pursued its enemies with killer drones and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, untrustworthy foreign intelligence services, and proxy armies.

This new approach to war has been embraced by Washington as a lower risk, lower cost alternative to the messy wars of occupation and has been championed as a clean and surgical way of conflict. But the knife has created enemies just as it has killed them. It has fomented resentments among allies, fueled instability, and created new weapons unbound by the normal rules of accountability during wartime.

If a government that has, and uses, the power to kill in secret doesn’t give you pause, it should. As citizens of a democratic republic, allowing too much secret activity, including against our enemies, sets a dangerous precedent, and the weapon we wield today can just as easily be put at our throat tomorrow.

In an interview with NPR, Mazzetti points out that authorization for targeted killings, originally begun under the Bush Administration, has expanded under the Obama Administration:

Seal of the C.I.A. - Central Intelligence Agen...

Seal of the C.I.A. – Central Intelligence Agency of the United States Government (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The CIA has become a machine for killing in many ways. The counterterrorism center has become, in many ways, the sort of beating heart of the agency that does manhunting. And the drone operations are something that two successive White Houses have embraced. You could argue that the current administration, the Obama administration, has embraced it even more than its predecessor. And these questions of ‘Should the CIA stay in the killing business? Should they be focused on drone strikes? Or should that be something that the military should do?’ It is something that is unresolved but is certainly being discussed.

Apropos:It was initiatives like this that the peace movement protested in the second term of the Bush Administration, but those same activists are almost no where to be found today.

 

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Review | Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

April 4, 2013 by 9 Comments

200px-Debt_GraeberBy all accounts, anything written by David Graeber is about as far from typical “conservative” fare that you might expect to find featured on this site. Graeber is an anthropologist and anarchist, an early member of the Occupy Wall Stree movement. He’s so “out there” that even Yale decided not to renew his contract as an assistant professor in 2005.

If he’s too liberal for Yale, then…well, you know. Probably too liberal for me, too, right?

Or maybe not.  If just to understand why the leaders of the Occupy Movement believe what they do, it might be worth the effort to read what he has written.

I heard about Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years from, of all places, a science fiction blog review (and my apologies for not remembering which one). The review described how sordid and strange certain cultures were in how they dealt with debt. It intrigued me: cultures on our own planet as foreign and strange as something that might appear in Star Trek or some other fictionally created world.

The descriptions don’t disappoint. But the strange trading rituals and bizarre debt arrangements between tribes, families, and individuals of the Australian outback, the African savanna, or the American forests that Graeber describes in his look at the last 5,000 years are just prelude. As the language of debt conflates sin, morality and finance, we come to Graeber’s central question:

What, precisely, does it mean to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal? What does it mean when we reduce moral obligations to debts? What changes when the one turns into the other? And how do we speak about them when our language has been so shaped by the market?

English: David Graeber on a boat at Fire Island.

English: David Graeber on a boat at Fire Island. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s a fascinating question, and it’s hard to not sympathize with the quandary that Graeber sees in the language that we have developed to talk about debt, our capital systems, and markets. Even so, Graeber’s conclusions make straw men out of the theories underlying the modern market economy, starting with Adam Smith, dismissing them with only short thrift.

This isn’t to say that Graeber doesn’t see a place for markets. It is capitalism, as means for power and form of slavery, that Graeber despises. “It is the secret scandal of capitalism that at no point has it been organized primarily around free labor.”  For example, the conquest of the Americas is integrally connected to mass slavery, in the forms of African slavery and debt peonage. Chinese contract laborers built the North American railroad system, while “coolies” from India built South African silver mines. Peasants of Russia and Poland were free landholders through the middle ages, only becoming serfs at the dawn of capitalism.

And so on. The choice between state and market is wrong, he says, and it’s domination of political ideology over the last centuries has “made it difficult to argue about anything else.”

Capitalism requires constant consumption and destruction, Graeber argues, and for that reason has always been created by warfare and conquest, rather than as a replacement for barter as we have generally accepted (see Adam Smith).  With less and less to consume, humanity is reaching its social and ecological limits.

Graeber’s conclusions are, to say the least, a rewriting of history as we’ve been taught, to say nothing of how we view markets and capital.

I would like, then, to end by putting in a good word for the non-industrious poor. At least they aren’t hurting anyone. Insofar as the time they are taking time off from work is being spent with friends and family, enjoying and caring for those they love, they’re probably improving the world more than we acknowledge.”

English: occupy wall street

English: occupy wall street (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s a rosy look at people who need not work to produce because they are free from debt, and in that sense, completely free. It sounds great…but it’s rosy, and ignores human nature’s desires to create and work.

Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years  is a monster of a book, difficult even, though always fascinating. While I do not agree with the extremities to which his conclusions take him, there is something to be said for the corruption created when capital and political power are conflated. Crony capitalism is a distortion of the free market, just as political interference in the market is a distortion.

At the very least, Debt measures up as an interesting anthropological history of cultures as disparate from my western world as Vulcans or Klingons are from us. More importantly, and more to the point why I recommend you read Debt, unlike cultures created for science fiction, they are real, and that in itself is worth the read.

Publius Online is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, a month long quest to post every day. Each day should match a letter of the alphabet. Today is the letter D.

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C is for Comeback America by David Walker

April 3, 2013 by 3 Comments
unemployment-rate

The national unemployment rate.

Sometimes, I’m a cynic.

For example, I don’t trust that Democrats care as much about the Second Amendment and gun regulation, immigration reform, or gay marriage as they say (heck, I’m not even sure Republicans care as much as they say, either, but that’s another post). I think they’re, largely, cherry picking issues that they can use to pander to various demographic groups and distract from the relatively unexciting business of a slow economy which, by virtue of President Obama’s reelection, they own.  In spite of what political left may argue, little has improved in the economy since the election last year. Unemployment nationally still hovers between 7.9 and 7.7%, economic growth slowed at the end of last year, and personal income is down 2.2% this year.

So why aren’t we talking about economic growth and how to bring about an economic “comeback” for America?

A couple years back, I read an interesting book by David Walker, former Comptroller of the United States. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in it, but I think it can add to the conversation on what needs to be addressed to move our country into a more competitive position than slow growth and stagnant personal incomes.

 

Comeback America

Comeback America: Turning the Country Around and Restoring Fiscal Responsibility by David M. Walker

As the former comptroller general of the United States, Walker knows a little about the fiscal workings of the modern federal government. For fifteen years, he served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, from Reagan to Clinton to the Bushes, and had a unique opportunity to call into question the decisions that have lead to our current fiscal woes. And in Comeback America, he doesn’t hold back.  We are a great country, but we are putting ourselves in a difficult position:

We live in a great and resilient nation. For all of our problems, the United States remains a global superpower and a beacon of liberty for people around the world. We have much to be proud of and thankful for. But I am here to tell you that if we don’t find a way to get spending under control, we will put our nation’s economy and international standing at risk and bequeath to our children a world of severely diminished opportunities.

It’s not too late. But we had better act soon.

After opening the book with describing our current fiscal problems–looking at the America of 2030 if we continue our current trajectory, examining principles from our history, and spelling out the challenges that President Obama faced as he came into office–Walker lays out his recommendations in each major area of federal spending in the succeeding chapters.

Walker skips right over earmarks and discretionary spending, which account for only a very small percentage of our federal budget, and goes right to the heart of  the problem: entitlements, insufficient tax revenues, spending deficits, Defense Department inefficiency, and systemic problems. Each gets a chapter that provides context, history, and recommendations.

Beyond easy accessibility, perhaps the most important reason you should read this book is the lack of partisan taint. His approach, and recommendations, are nonpartisan, pragmatic, and worthy of consideration.  He

David Walker

approaches the problems with one consideration–what is right for America and Americans?

Walker calls for not only the reform of entitlements, review and oversight of inefficiencies in several–large–areas of government, and the reform of the tax code, but also for changes in our very elective processes and to the constitution. It isn’t enough to just change policies–we also need to change the systemic problems with how we got here and make it difficult to get here again.

In the end, Walker makes a compelling case for, in his words, not a “small government or a big government[,]” but an effective government–one that is fiscally responsible, focuses on the future, and looks out for the collective best interest of America and Americans rather than the narrow agendas of various special interests.

As one friend of mine has been known to observe–both parties are glad to spend, as long as it on the program that benefits its constituency. The right will spend on national security, and the left will spend on social programs. Both are spending, just not on the same thing. Indeed, fiscal responsibility is a claim that neither elected major national party can claim–at least not in recent memory or with any measure of integrity.

Despite the current difficulties, exacerbated by the pop of the housing bubble and the subsequent recession, America can “comeback.” Walker’s book is full of great ideas and suggestions to see that that happens. I recommend you pick up a copy soon. You might find yourself asking different questions of your elected representatives than their position on immigration. 

Publius Online is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, a month long quest to post every day. Each day should match a corresponding letter of the alphabet. Today is C.

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Books and Reading, Entitlement Reform, Fiscal Reform, healthcare reform Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

B is for Bankruptcy of Stockton, California

April 2, 2013 by 8 Comments

ca-small-business-routesIt’s a running joke around these parts (Utah) that a successful business plan for a California company starts with leaving California. The cost of living, rising taxes, and increased government regulation are all combining to make California less attractive, the beaches not withstanding.

Now comes this: Stockton, California, a city of around 300,000, has declared bankruptcy. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Christopher Klein signed off on the bankruptcy petition yesterday.  It’s the largest U.S. city yet to do so.

Faced with finances crippled by the housing crisis and recession, Stockton has already eliminated retiree healthcare benefits and at some point will need to negotiate with California’s pension system, the California Public Employees Retirement System or CALPERs, about how to deal with pension payments to retired city workers.  Not surprisingly, the city’s creditors opposed the bankruptcy.

During his comments, Klein noted that Stockton’s cost cutting had started years ago, and now 77% of the city budget was devoted to diminished police and fire services. (Ironically, last year saw a record number of murders in Stockton…has police protection has been diminished too much?)

Stockton BankruptcyWhich begs the question: if so much of the city’s budget is devoted to such basic services as police and fire, how did Stockton rack up so much debt that it exceed its ability to pay?  Has the tax base in Stockton been hit so hard?

Apparently so. Klein in his findings of facts said that the bankruptcy was precipitated by

over betting on sustained tax revenues from a real estate boom, bankrolled a downtown redevelopment and doled out generous employee benefits on top of a “multi-decade, largely invisible pattern of above-market compensation for public employees.”

The jokes about people and businesses leaving California for better opportunity may be funny, but the results of overspending are not. Let’s hope that Stockton is no more than a cautionary tale, rather than an omen of things to come.

Ironically, Obama cheer leader Paul Krugman’s column in yesterday’s New York Times, mocking conservatives for decrying “liberal big spending and overpaid public employees” as “bringing on collapse” in California, came out just hours before Klein issued his ruling. Apparently, reality failed to read Krugman, and, unfortunately, reality does not negotiate.

Publius Online is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, a month long quest to post every day. Each day should match a letter of the alphabet. Today is the letter B.

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