Tag Archives: Taxpayer

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Democrat platform supports subsidizing abortions with taxpayer dollars

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From the Weekly Standard.

Excerpt:

The 2012 Democratic party will officially adopt an extreme position on the issue of abortion on Tuesday. According to a copy of the party platform, which was released online just before midnight on Monday, “The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay.”

That last part–“regardless of ability to pay”–is an endorsement of taxpayer-funded abortions, a policy that President Obama has personally endorsed. Obama wants Medicaid to pay directly for elective abortions, and Obamacare will allow beneficiaries to use federal subsidies to purchase health care plans that cover elective abortions.

[…]The 2012 Democratic party also endorses an unrestricted right to abortion-on-demand. According to the platform, on the issue of abortion “there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way.” In 2003, Obama was asked if he was pro-choice on abortion “in all situations including the late-term thing.” Obama replied: “I’m pro-choice.”

In 1992, then-Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton tried to soften the party’s image on abortion by expressing his desire to make abortion “safe, legal, and rare.” Although the Democratic party platforms in 2000 and 2004 stated the party’s goal is to make abortion “rare,” the 2012 platform makes no such claim. “In 2000, the Democratic platform said the party’s goal was ‘to make abortion less necessary and more rare,'” Jeff Jacoby wrote in the Boston Globe last week. “The 2004 platform declared, ‘Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.’ But even calling for abortion to be ‘rare’ is now too much for the Democrats’ platform committee, which deleted the word in 2008.” The word “rare” did not make a comeback in 2012.

Surprise! The Democrats want pro-life taxpayers to subsidize abortions. And what happens to the frequency of an action when people are paid to do it? You get more of it. The Democrats aren’t “pro-choice”, they’re pro-abortion. They want more abortion. And why not? The largest provider of abortions in America, Planned Parenthood, will be getting these taxpayer subsidies, and they’ll just turn around and give political contributions back to the Democrats. Everybody wins! Well, everybody except the babies and the taxpayers.

We are in a recession. Is this really the time to be sending women a message that if they are irresponsible with sex, that they will get a bailout from taxpayers who are already struggling to pay their own bills? How is that fair? People have to stop taking risks that are likely to incur costs – costs that may be passed on to their more responsible neighbors. We need to encourage people to take responsibility for their own actions and to make wise choices.

News

Federal judge approves sex change for convicted murderer

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Wes from Reason to Stand send me this disturbing story from ABC News.

Excerpt: (links removed)

A federal judge ordered Massachusetts prison officials today to providesexual reassignment surgery for a convicted murderer, calling it the only way to correct the “prolonged violation” of the inmate’s Constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment.

Michelle Kosilek, who was born Robert, had filed a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, seeking an injunction that would require prison officials to grant her the sexual reassignment surgery that was recommended by prison doctors as treatment for her gender identity disorder. Robert Kosilek was convicted in the 1990 strangulation death of his wife, Cheryl.

U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ruled that Michelle Kosilek, who lives as a woman in a male prison facility, had experienced “intense mental anguish,” and said there was a “serious medical need” for her to have the procedure.

“It has long been well-established that it is cruel for prison officials to permit an inmate to suffer unnecessarily from a serious medical need,” the judge wrote in his 128-page decision.

He called it “unusual” to treat a prisoner with gender identity disorder differently “than the numerous inmates suffering from more familiar forms of mental illness.”

[…]Kosilek first sued the Department of Corrections in 2000. Two years later, Wolf ruled she should receive treatment for gender identity disorder, which included hormones. Kosilek sued again in 2005, again asking for gender reassignment surgery.

Frances Cohen, an attorney for Kosilek, told the Associated Press the judge made a courageous and thoughtful ruling.

I wonder if Frances Cohen and the judge are going to be paying for the surgery? No – that’s for the taxpayers to handle, I guess.

This tomfoolery is actually not unprecedented. Sex changes are taxpayer-funded in Ontario, Canada – where they have single-payer health care. And criminals are all eligible for sex changes in the UK under their NHS socialized medicine system. Here’s a recent case from last year, where a convicted killer is getting a sex change, courtesy of the NHS. (Which means the UK taxpayer)

News

A closer look at the Obama administration’s $525 million loan to Solyndra

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From the Manhattan Institute. (H/T Tom)

Here’s the first thing to note about this story:

Both Republican and Democratic administrations have practiced a “green” industrial policy by supporting ventures that promised to pursue renewable, non-carbon-based energy production or energy conservation.

The DOE’s authority to issue loan guarantees for innovative, clean energy technologies, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, was passed by a Republican House and Senate and signed into law by George W. Bush. Under the law, Congress authorized the issuance of $4 billion in loan guarantees in 2007, and $47 billion in 2009 with the objective of encouraging the development of new technologies. [2] [3]

However, no DOE loan guarantees were made during the Bush administration. The DOE wanted to make a loan to Solyndra, but career officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) did not approve it, on the grounds that the project was not financially sound.

The Section 1705 Loan Program was created by the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, which amended the Energy Policy Act of 2005.[4] The 2009 stimulus bill gave the DOE an additional $3.95 billion for loan guarantees.[5]

So that’s where the money came from. It was “stimulus” money. And now the shocking part:

By November 2008, Solyndra had raised $450 million from investors and was applying for a loan guarantee from the DOE under the Energy Policy Act of 2005. But the loan was turned down in January 2009 in the waning days of the Bush administration, on the grounds that “there is presently not an independent market study addressing long term prospects for this company” and “there is concern regarding the scale-up of production assumed in the plan for Fab 2,” a second factory.[7]

On January 13, 2009, Lachlan Seward, director of the loan program at the DOE, wrote, “After canvassing the Committee it was the unanimous decision not to engage in further discussions with Solyndra at this time.”[8] Lachlan was referring to the DOE Credit Committee, which was composed of DOE officials.

When President Obama took office days later, the DOE’s tone changed. In a March 10, 2009, e-mail to an unnamed official, a senior adviser to Energy Secretary Steven Chu wrote, “The solar co [sic] board approved the terms of the loan guarantee last night, setting us up for the first loan guarantee conditional commitment for the president’s visit to California on the 19th.”[9] As events soon revealed, March 19, 2009, was a wildly premature target date for a presidential visit. In fact, President Obama didn’t visit Solyndra until May 2010.

E-mails dated 2009 depict White House and DOE officials rushing to sign off on the project so that Vice President Joe Biden could appear at the Fremont plant in September 2009 to trumpet the administration’s support for green jobs. There was confusion about who would go and when, as well as a palpable sense of urgency. Within the OMB—historically the most fiscally conservative agency in any administration—there was anxiety about premature planning and precedent.

On March 10, 2009, an OMB official whose name was blacked out by the administration before the e-mails were released to Congress wrote, “DOE is trying to deliver the first loan guarantee within 60 days from inauguration (the prior administration could not get it done in four years). This deal is NOT [sic] ready for prime time.”[10]

[…]On August 31, 2009, an unidentified OMB official wrote to Terrell McSweeny, domestic policy adviser to Vice President Biden, saying “We have ended up in the situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of this week). We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews and have the approval set the date for the announcement rather than the other way around.”[12] Regardless of these concerns, the loan was approved on September 3, and Biden announced it via satellite at Solyndra’s plant on September 4.

[…]On May 24, 2010, Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to the president, forwarded a Cleantech Blog post by Philip Smith to Ron Klain, chief of staff to Vice President Biden. The post outlined the doubts of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Solyndra’s auditors, about the company. It stated, “On a pure business analysis you have to agree with the auditors—they are not a going concern.”[14] Jarrett said to Klain in an e-mail, “As you know, a Going Concern letter is not good. Thoughts?”[15]

Although Jarrett and Klain knew that Solyndra would go under, two days later, on May 26, 2010, the president visited the newly built Solyndra manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, and declared, “It is here that companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter, more prosperous future …. We can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra.”

Fascinating. This is what the government does with the money that it is borrowing from your children. This is what the “stimulus” efforts of the Obama administration amounted to. Not only was the Solyndra loan an opportunity to pay back a Democrat campaign fundraiser, but we now learn that it was also rushed through to provide Obama with a publicity opportunity. Is that the main job of the President of the United States? To waste money on photo opportunities?