1. 6.2% Contraction Rate in 4th Quarter — Budget Based on Brighter Projection (that title is found only on the paper version).
2. Democrats Limit Future Financing for Washington Voucher Program.
3. Obama moves to undo rule on abortion procedures: "The Obama administration moved Friday to undo a last-minute Bush
administration rule granting broad protections to health workers who
refuse to take part in abortions or provide other health care that goes
against their consciences."
That's from today alone. I ask you: What song or song title comes to mind?
Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”
Led Zeppelin “If it keeps on rainin, levy’s gonna break….”
But the scary part is undoing the protections for people who don’t perform medical procedures that go against their conscience. Makes me nervous.
“it’s the end of the world as we know it”
REM
But I don’t feel fine. How can one administration ignore the realities of economics in so many areas.
“Head Like a Hole” by NIN
Tool’s “Ænema”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCEeAn6_QJo
Some say the end is near. Some say we’ll see armageddon soon. I certainly hope we will. I sure could use a vacation from this bullshit three ring circus sideshow of Freaks here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA The only way to fix it is to flush it all away. Any fucking time. Any fucking day. Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona bay. Fret for your figure and Fret for your latte and Fret for your hairpiece and Fret for your lawsuit and Fret for your prozac and Fret for your pilot and Fret for your contract and Fret for your car. It’s a bullshit three ring circus sideshow of freaks here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA The only way to fix it is to flush it all away. Any fucking time. Any fucking day. Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona bay. Some say a comet will fall from the sky. Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves. Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still. Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits. Some say the end is near. Some say we’ll see armageddon soon. I certainly hope we will cuz I sure could use a vacation from this Silly shit, stupid shit… One great big festering neon distraction, I’ve a suggestion to keep you all occupied. Learn to swim. Mom’s gonna fix it all soon. Mom’s comin’ round to put it back the way it ought to be. Learn to swim. Fuck L Ron Hubbard and Fuck all his clones. Fuck all those gun-toting Hip gangster wannabes. Learn to swim. Fuck retro anything. Fuck your tattoos. Fuck all you junkies and Fuck your short memory. Learn to swim. Fuck smiley glad-hands With hidden agendas. Fuck these dysfunctional, Insecure actresses. Learn to swim. Cuz I’m praying for rain and I’m praying for tidal waves I wanna see the ground give way. I wanna watch it all go down. Mom please flush it all away. I wanna watch it go right in and down. I wanna watch it go right in. Watch you flush it all away. Time to bring it down again. Don’t just call me pessimist. Try and read between the lines. I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t Welcome any change, my friend. I wanna see it all come down. suck it down. flush it down.
‘Sister Christian’? ‘Rocky Raccoon’? ’6’1″‘? ‘Come On-a My House’? ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’? Come on, give us a hint.
The Clampdown-The Clash
Blue Oyster Cult, “Don’t Fear the Reaper” (youtube: cheesy 8-bit instrumental)
Matt:
The rule against discrimination against workers who refuse to pursue the employer’s business on grounds of conscience prevents the employer from (1) not hiring people who will refuse to do the work assigned and (2) firing people who refuse to do the work assigned.
Overturning this rule against discrimination does not force people to act against their consciences (they don’t have to work there) but instead enables the employer to pursue a lawful occupation without interference from employees. Since when does a person have to hire saboteurs?
The More Things Change by Cinderella
Bob Dylan ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’.
Dennis-
If a work contract specifies that your job is to perform abortions, then fine.
This rule has nothing to do with that. Despite the claim…
What this rule means is that you should hire people to do abortions and not subject those who are opposed to participating in them.
Hint: labor is fungible in this case.
You and I both know that certain hospitals would use this to discriminate based on moral and ethical principles, which is dabgerously close to religious persecution.
Perhaps we should mandate that all doctors participate in at least one abortion to become certified? Why not?
What you have just done us de facto state supported religious persecution.
Congratulations, you enabled it!
Definitely the Peaches song in the film Lost in Translation.
I’d name the song title, but this is a family website.
If you’re not familiar, just look up Peaches on Wikipedia and scroll down to soundtracks. If you haven’t ever heard it, pull it up online, the song is insanely addictive — not to mention capturing the mood of the times uniquely well.
Dennis –
Even the Department of Defense has a role for people who morally object to firing a weapon at another human being.
Hint: they probably work in the Pentagon pushing papers doing something like defense procurement.
If the left is going to take up the cause of soldiers or draftees who claim conscientious objector status, they ought to respect the right of general practitioners and nurses to object to participating in certain types of medical procedures.
As long as the work contract is specific and not unduly discriminatory on this basis then fine. Hire people who do not object to performing abortions to do abortions. If they said they are willing to do them, and then object, then there is a recourse.
What some hospitals were doing was making an unduly broad cross-section of practitioners participate in these sensitive, ELECTIVE procedures.
It is de-facto religious discrimination.
I am not a hard-core pro-life activist, but even I can see the potential for discriminatory abuse here. We ought to respect ethical and moral rights where it is not unduly burdensome on the ability to carry on commerce and free exchange of goods and services.
Given that labor is highly fungible in this case, there is very little practical burden placed on health care providers.
“Taxman” by The Beatles.
Sunday Morning Coming Down
@Matt at 4.49
Yes, some hospitals probably would discriminate, but this is not state persecution, nor is it widespread. Why not let the situation work itself out in the employment market?
Really? I’m the first to suggest “A Day in the Life”?
Highway to Hell–ACDC
Matt,
It has been a law for over 30 years that NO ONE has to perform an abortion (or sterilization) if they don’t want to. Nor can they be forced to do research on the topic. That is already the law. What this regulation added was that doctors also had a right to deny giving information, advice, or referrals to people who wanted an abortion. It gives the workers the right to not only deny the actual procedure (a right they already had), but a right to deny providing any information at all. It also gave the right to doctors to refuse to prescribe birth control, artificial insemination to patients (or to even offer information on such matters).
Read that article again. The Catholics weren’t mad because they were forced to perform abortions because they never were forced to. They were mad that they even had to mention it as an option or provide information and referrals regarding the procedure.
It also extended this right to anyone broadly associated with providing health care or welfare, including pharmacists, insurance companies, etc.
In Texas, there was a case of a girl who had been raped and her doctor prescribed the morning after pill to her to prevent the possibility of pregnancy by her rapist. A pharmacist refused to fill that prescription for her under these regulations. The pharmacist had veto power over a decision made between a patient and her daughter.
If a woman has a life-threatening condition and her life can be saved by an abortion, this gives the hospital the right to not only refuse the abortion, but to deny giving her any information about it as an option or where should could go to get one. It also gives doctors the right to refuse treatment based on the sexual orientation of the patient (if that doctor finds that orientation to be against his or her religious views).
I’m sorry, but when it comes to patient’s rights vs. doctor’s rights, I will side with the patient every time. I also do not want to give any third party veto power over any decision I make with my doctor.
There may very well be discrimination in the medical field against people based on their religious beliefs, and people may well indeed feel pressure to do something they don’t want to do. But, this was a far over-reaching regulation which disproportionately harmed a patient’s ability to get the medical attention they desired.
So drop that “forced to do an abortion” nonsense. That’s already been illegal for decades, and will continue to remain illegal.
The Soviet National Anthem?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpvq3hmCKCs&feature=PlayList&p=02CCD928A00AA315&index=2
“In Texas, there was a case of a girl who had been raped and her doctor prescribed the morning after pill to her to prevent the possibility of pregnancy by her rapist. A pharmacist refused to fill that prescription for her under these regulations. The pharmacist had veto power over a decision made between a patient and her daughter.”
Man what ignorance. If the doctor thought a chemical abortifacient was necessary, he could have provided it to her. Pharmacists are not physicians’ handmaidens.
They are professionals and entitled to judgment. There’s a reason prescriptive and (paid) dispensive powers are not vested in a single profession.
It funny how “pro-choice” falls apart if somebody disagrees with the morality of abortion-hence the fascism in the movement.
What does it make me think?
“Row row fight the power!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7aUT13qtM
It’s also worth saying that that pharmacist’s judgement wasn’t professional, it was personal. Pharmacists are given the power not to fill a prescription because it helps improve the medical service their clients receive; to use it for another purpose breaches professional ethics.
Matt, the bill gave a pharmacist the right to deny my daughter birth control pills without knowing why her doctor prescribed them.
That hers were prescribed by a fertility doctor as a last effort before trying fertility drugs or IVF is not information included on the prescription.
It makes no sense on so many levels to give pharmacists the privilege of being MDs without the education and record-keeping requirements involved.
This is one area where Obama is right.
Babar, think hard about the terms “ex ante” and “ex post” and get back to me when you’ve said something less ridiculous.
There is only one song that should be on everyone’s mind nowadays and you comrades better start memorizing it. (Btw., while you’re on it, think again who won the Cold War)
Arise ye starvelings from your slumbers
Arise ye criminals of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
and at last ends the age of cant.
Now away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise!
We’ll change forthwith the old conditions
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
CHORUS
Then come comrades rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale
Unites the human race. (repeat).
We peasants, artisans and others,
Enrolled amongst the sons of toil
Let’s claim the earth henceforth for brothers
Drive the indolent from the soil.
On our flesh for too long has fed the raven
We’ve too long been the vultures prey.
But now farewell to spirit craven
The dawn brings in a brighter day.
CHORUS
No saviour from on high delivers
No trust we have in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear.
Ere the thieves will out with their booty
And to all give a happier lot.
Each at his forge must do his duty
And strike the iron while its hot.
As a first year medical student, these rule changes on abortion have a direct bearing on my future. I really don’t understand what the big deal is with these rules. No one should be forced to perform what are almost always ELECTIVE procedures against their conscience. For the few cases when it isn’t, for example giving emergency contraception to a rape victim, go ahead and make an exception in the rules…but why use the rare exception to browbeat providers in the vast majority of cases where all the patient seeking birth control has to do is drive another block to stop at another pharmacy? Is one person’s convenience worth violating someone’s conscience?
And to address the constantly used Christian scientist decides to be a doctor argument…isn’t it obvious that there is a quantitative difference between the two? The Christian scientist objects to the entirety of medicine…a Catholic physician would only object to abortion and contraception. If all medicine was simply those two things, we’d have a problem, but it clearly isn’t. Again, can’t these guidelines be written to differentiate between the two?
Dennis seems to think this is about employers and employees. That is beside the point.
As a physician, I am my own boss, or rather my partners and I are our own bosses. I am on staff at a Catholic hospital that performs no abortions. I will not perform abortions or assist in any way with them.
But we are rapidly approaching the situation in some European countries, where every hospital and every doctor must be prepared to perform abortion on demand, or lose their licenses. Organized medicine is infested with radicals and feminists who are already trying to make it mandatory for every OB/GYN resident to perform abortions while in training. Barack Obama– who supported a law permitting infanticide when he was a state senator– will put the force of the government behind this injustice, mark my words.
I will quit my job before I will take part in such an atrocity. A public that demands that I participate in murder to keep my license to practice medicine does not deserve the benefit of my skill and knowledge and exhausting work. I’ll dig ditches before I let the government scum order me to become a murderer. I hope enough of my colleagues feel the same way to cause the health care system to collapse if they try this.
Michael: If McCain had won, I wouldn’t have made the argument, as my premise would be incorrect. As it is, it’s at least potentially correct. I can refine it a bit: before the election, no-one knew who would win. It was in fact very possible that pro-choice women would hold the balance of votes. Enormous effort, therefore, was put into getting them to vote. One way this occured was that Obama promised them he would make the rule-change we are now discussing. By doing so, he was in effect offering them a chance to play my game. Only a chance, mind – if there had been too small a vote for him, he’d have lost anyway. It so happens that about 37% of women support the general availability of abortion – I guess the support for emergency contraception is higher – so that’s about 15-20% of the total vote. The margin of victory was 7%; therefore the game was indeed played!
Well, sorta. Obviously my model is a gross simplification – more of a pointed joke than an explanation, really. It does have interesting aspects to it, though. For instance, the pharmacists experience negative utility and the women positive utility in the Nash equilibria. This doesn’t have any effect whatsoever on the mathematics, but it doesn’t seem fair when one participant does well and another poorly, even if that’s the rational outcome. It must be particularly galling for the pharmacists that they have no real way of punishing the women for voting their own interests, as punishment (revenge) is how ‘injustices’ of this kind are usually redressed.
Na, na, na, na, na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey Jude …
Re. the idea that doctors are being forced to provide abortions: nonsense. One would think that on a libertarian blog, of all places, one’d see people applauding the government stepping out of regulating the employer-employee relationship. After all, if hospitals are not going to be permitted to fire doctors or RNs who refuse to do their jobs out of conscience, they’re going to be more careful about whom they hire – and may even discriminate against pro-lifers. Remember from elem macro why European frictional unemployment is so much higher than American? Better unemployment insurance and tight restrictions on hiring; the latter, of course, is relevant to this discussion.
On a different note, someone once pointed out that the difference between an opinion and a religious belief is minimal. So why do religious opinions (and whether you like it or not, the pro-life position is just that; the vast majority of pro-lifers are hardcore religious, too) get special protection in the workplace, and other opinions don’t? After all, if I think Wal-Mart is the third coming of the Antichrist, should I be required to drive my boss’ truck there to deliver goods, or will the government protect my religious exemption?
I might be dating myself with this song, but something from a prior era of hard times (1982): Pete Wylie (Wah!), “The Story of the Blues, Part 1 & 2″ (youtube, with somebody’s odd homemade video). Part 2 is worth the wait.
j. christian: Why do so many pro-lifers deny evolution by natural selection, if understanding biology motivates people to be pro-life?
@ Nathan Cook:
Your analysis omits the disutility experienced by every other purchaser of prescription drugs when they are harder to obtain once the pharmacists who cared enough to leave the profession have done so. The outcome of the question crossing the line from private choice to public choice is that almost everybody loses.
In my analysis, I considered only those people I thought would act based on pharmacy/emergency contraception issues. Most people don’t; all the pro-lifers are voting Rep anyway, for example. Those people who get a disutility if Dem wins and aren’t strongly pro-life or pro-choice are slightly different; although if you summed their disutilities you might find the figure outweighed the total disutility to EC seeking women of Rep winning, individually the disutility of longer drives is lower than that of potential surgical abortions etc. On the whole, then, these ‘middle’ people have utility functions dominated by other matters, so they don’t participate in the game as such. Rather, they set a baseline of support for each candidate, which the game participants can add to or not add to.
Adding utilities to determine the best option for society is misguided. Utilities are a property of the people who experience them; they are denominated in different units. Each EC prescription filled is good for some people and bad for other people; matching utility scales between people is an arbitrary process. If there were a market in the goods in question, this wouldn’t matter, and we could even talk about a socially optimal scenario, but there isn’t. Therefore the participants will decide what to do based on their own utilities, and if they’re rational utility maximizers, my result follows.
Suggestions: This rule-change mostly affects pharmacists and pharmacy technicians who refuse to discuss contraception or refer customers to other pharmacists or pharmacies who offer it. We want to increase everyone’s utility compared to the Nash equilibrium, subject to the constraint that strict pro-lifers not be forced to help their customers get EC, as there is probably nothing that could induce them to do so. A standard penalty could be leveled on pharmacies each time they refuse to fill an EC prescription or refer to someone else. The customer would receive a receipt informing her she is eligible for compensation, and indicating a hotline; the receipt would not give details of where to get EC, to avoid the original problem. The penalties would be collected and divided up, then awarded as damages. I suggest a standard penalty of five times the cost of the prescription, for starters; that should be about $150 a pop. Pharmacists make good money and can afford this. Certainly it costs less than an enforced change in employment. The women do not get EC, but get money. The penalties should be adjusted until women who get the receipts report as being as happy with the outcome as those who get the EC. If this doesn’t work, use the money in a different way that does, e.g. employing EC specialists in every pharmacy that doesn’t sign up to a voluntary EC access code.
Nathan Cook,
That’s your answer? Create a whole new government bureaucracy and cede more power to centralized government? Pure genius. Not. You are talking about something that happens only infrequently. My wife is a pharmacist and in her whole career (over 13 years) she has only seen this happen once, and we live in the “Bible Belt”. Most mom and pop pharmacies, which are probably where this would be a real problem, are gone. The big chains hire a diverse group of people so the odds are good there would only be one pharmacist or tech out of many who would refuse to provide these services.
As some others here have said, just ask for another pharmacist or head down the street to the next pharmacy. Since there seems to be one on just about every corner, no big deal. If the pharmacy refuses to sell birth control or healthcare workers opt out of taking part in something they find immoral, so what? My suspicion is that this, like so many other hot button issues, has been blown completely out of proportion. No surprise there. I’d say something smart alecky here about democracy but I’ll refrain.
Again the debate boils down to when human life begins. Personally, I don’t thin it begins before implantation — before development of the amniotic sac — because before that it does not have a life support system. Abortion is removing the life support. Therefore, I see nothing wrong with the ‘morning after’ pill.
ACDC: Highway to Hell
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