KnowYourPro

Courtney joined the bone marrow registry as an undergrad at Georgia Tech. It was a quick process, a swab to her cheek. Two years later, she found out she was the only match out of 13 million donors on the registry for a father in his 50's who would otherwise die of leukemia. Courtney underwent the simple two-hour procedure, which she described as easy as giving blood. The hardest part for Scott, was finding the words to say thank you to a stranger who saved his life.. The bone marrow donor ...

Of all the odd twists and turns in the health care reform debate that climaxes this week, the oddest may be the possibility that a dozen House Democrats will kill the Senate health bill because of fears that it is pro-abortion.

In fact, a straightforward reading of the Senate health bill section on abortion, which was written mainly by pro-life Democrat Ben Nelson (D-NE), finds legislators doing all kinds of gymnastics to stigmatize abortion and prevent any American from even indirectly paying for it who does not want to do so. I am not aware of any other medical procedure that is treated this way in the massive health care bill.

The Senate bill, which will apparently be the subject of the first vote in the House late this week, has a strikingly large number of anti-abortion provisions. (I am indebted to Washington and Lee law professor Timothy Stoltzfus Jost for much of this analysis.) In layman's terms, these provisions include:

• A prohibition preventing insurance companies from using federal funds, including tax credits or cost-sharing assistance, to pay for abortion services that go beyond the longstanding Hyde Amendment restrictions long enshrined in Medicaid (threat to the life of the mother, rape, and incest);
• A prohibition preventing the Secretary of Health and Human Services from requiring the coverage of any abortion services as part of the "essential health benefits" for any qualified health plan in a state insurance exchange;
• A mandate that if an insurance company offers a plan in a state exchange that has abortion coverage that goes beyond the Hyde abortion restrictions, that company is required to collect a separate second premium payment from each enrollee who wants that abortion coverage--they actually have to write what I would call an "abortion check";
• A further mandate that said insurance company would then be required to deposit these separate abortion checks into what could equally well be called an "abortion account" consisting solely of these payments and used exclusively to pay for these services;
• A mandate that state insurance commissioners ensure that health plans comply with these abortion segregation requirements in accordance with generally acceptable accounting principles on fund management as specified by the Office of Management and Budget;
• A permission (going far beyond the current House bill) allowing states to pass laws prohibiting the inclusion of abortion coverage in plans offered in a state health insurance exchange, even if those plans do not receive a public subsidy;
• A reaffirmation of federal conscience protection clauses banning qualified health plans from discriminating against any health care provider or facility because of its unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or even refer for, abortions;

And then there are two deeply pro-life measures in the bill that some of us have been advocating for quite some time:

• Establishment and funding of programs to support vulnerable pregnant women and thus prevent abortion from the demand side;
• Increase of the adoption tax credit and a provision to make it refundable so that lower income families can access the tax credit.

Is this a pro-choice bill? Not in the view of Planned Parenthood, which decries the legislation by saying: "The current Senate language...would result in the most significant restriction in access to abortion coverage in the nearly 35 years since the U.S. Congress first adopted the Hyde Amendment...it is anticipated that most private health insurers would no longer offer coverage for abortion."

Stepping back from the details, what is most clear to me is that the Senate bill actually stigmatizes abortion in a way that must be deeply distressing for those who have spent the last several decades trying to mainstream abortion as a basic medical service. The deeply entrenched Hyde Amendment had already stigmatized abortion by narrowing the grounds for abortion that would be seen as legitimate enough for tax dollars to pay for it. If the Senate abortion language passes it will further mark off abortion as a morally dubious medical practice that no American should have to be implicated in who does not choose to be.

Note that it is not the pro-choice side that is threatening to sink health care reform over this language. It is the pro-life side. Led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), this group has not been persuaded that this language is anti-abortion enough for their preferences. I do not question their motives, but I wonder whether at this point we are talking more about having gotten out on a limb with a position that is now very difficult to walk back from, than it is about the actual substance of the matter.

Personally, I am an evangelical Christian who seeks to live by a consistent pro-life ethic. I deeply desire to see thirty million of my uninsured neighbors in this country to be able to visit a doctor when they are sick and avoid 45,000 preventable deaths a year. I also deeply desire to see a country that turns away from abortion as a routine social practice.

Whatever else might be said about health care reform, in the bill that will be voted on this week both goals are front and center--health care for tens of millions, and stark limits on abortion. I think that pro-life legislators should accept the victory they have won while they can get it.

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I don't know what it is about idiots and cutting down trees, but for some reason they never remember to expect the worst. I guess I should cut them some slack, though. Sometimes there are so many worst case scenarios, it's got to be impossible to remember them all. The tree could fall on you, on your house, on a neighbor's house, on your car, someone else's car. If you're climbing up the tree, you could fall out of it. The possibilities are endless, but that doesn't change the fact that only one of them is good. That one doesn't happen in any of these videos.

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Richard DeVaul's Linkedin status changed last month from Founder & President at AWare Technologies to Senior Prototype Engineer at Apple computer. This is a significant hire for Apple and one that shows the company is looking far ahead into the future of mobile computing.

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Headlines tell of Wall Street bailouts and banking abuses that have resulted in our usurious credit card hikes, heartless foreclosures, and the bankruptcy of Greece's entire economy. It seems that no person or institution is safe from corrupt banking practices.

While we might naively think that these practices are limited to Wall Street and large banking institutions, it has become clear that these practices have robbed our communities as well.
Big banks, along with politicians, have lured states and communities across the US to buy into banking derivatives or 'swaps,' and all are paying the price.
And in each of these cases, well heeled politicians were paving the way for the banks at the people's expense.

Let's look at a few example, and find out why Bill Richardson had to withdraw his name for Commerce Secretary, and why Colorado Senator Michael Bennet should have made a better investment of our tax dollars.

(hat tip to JeffcoBlue)

To explain the derivatives that bankrupted Greece, and threaten to rob the pension of Colorado School Teachers, let's look at this article from the New York Times:

Across our very own country, municipalities, school districts, sewer systems and other tax-exempt debt issuers are ensnared in the derivatives mess.

Like the credit default swaps that hid Greece's obligations, the instruments weighing on our municipalities were brought to us by the creative minds of Wall Street. The rocket scientists crafting the products got backup from swap advisers, a group of conflicted promoters who consulted municipalities and other issuers. Both of these camps peddled swaps as a way for tax-exempt debt issuers to reduce their financing costs.

So the bankers have preying upon municipalities who needed financial solutions in a down economy, only to find out they had been duped.

But who was advising the municipalities? Our elected officials:
New Mexico:
(hat tip to Colleen Heild and Mike Gallagher)

They were touted as a state-of-the-art financing tool that would help New Mexico stretch its highway improvement dollars. Nearly five years later, state officials are trying to keep the $420 million in fancy financing from turning sour. In the last six months, one of the banks involved in the so-called interest rate swaps has gone bankrupt and the state has had to post about $16 million in collateral because the value of the investments dropped. That's in addition to major political fallout. The swaps and how a California company was selected to handle them are at the center of a federal grand jury investigation that derailed Gov. Bill Richardson's nomination as commerce secretary.

It seems that many state municipalities engaged in swaps that are now causing a lot of anger among tax payers:

Eight California municipalities, including Los Angeles, Fresno and San Diego County, filed civil class-action, or group lawsuits. The suits, most of which were consolidated with others in U.S. District Court in New York City, allege that banks colluded by deliberately losing bids in exchange for winning one in the future, providing so-called courtesy bids, secretly compensating losing bidders and allowing banks to see other bids.

Brokers participated in the collusion by facilitating communication among banks and sharing in illegal profits, the civil class-action suits allege.

And what is the cost of extracting your state from the swap?

New York State provides a good example. An Oct. 30, 2009, filing describing its swaps shows that for the most recent fiscal year, April 2008 to March 2009, the state paid $103 million to terminate roughly $2 billion worth of swaps -- more than a quarter of which resulted from the Lehman bankruptcy in September 2008.

On a local level here in Colorado, the circle grows tighter, as Colorado's own State Senator, Chris Romer, was at that time the person lobbying for New Mexico to engage in these swaps.

NMFA records show that among those lobbying for the swaps was a lead banker for JP Morgan, Chris Romer. His company ended up among the five banks that entered into swap agreements with the state.

And the ties to Colorado don't stop there - Senate appointee Michael Bennet was formerly at the head of Denver Public Schools. He was at the helm when the decision was made to invest the teachers' pension fund into a derivative 'swap' deal. Now, two years later, Denver Public Schools is paying about 3 million per month in losses on this swap.

DPS (Denver Public Schools) entered into negotiations with JP Morgan and CitiGroup, agreeing to issue fixed-rate bonds secured by DPS school buildings and other properties. DPS then began discussion to enter into an interest-rate swap agreement with JP Morgan, Bank of America and the Royal Bank of Canada. We believe that following ensued: DPS entered into a swap transaction, believing that interest rates would stay high. As recent financial news tells us, interest rates fell. We are concerned that this may have translated to a loss of taxpayer dollars.

I wonder if the local SEIU chapter will stand by its endorsement of the newly appointed Senator Michael Bennet, who has close ties these Wall street banks and was responsible for this 'swap' when SEIU international is now calling for a sweeping investigation of these 'swaps'.
In the face of the worst economy since the depression, we don't need gambling on derivatives with taxpayer money at the expense of teacher's pension.

Join SEIU's call for an investigation to get some kind of justice.

And in the face of Citizen's United, it's time we stop the corporate influence in elections.

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As for me, I will support Andrew Romanoff who has pledged to take no corporate money and run a people powered, not corporate powered, campaign.

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