The Choice No Woman Wants to Make

The Choice No Woman Wants to Make

The View from the Middle

While I never suggest Bill Clinton as a moral role model and I frequently question his motives, I find myself more and more often in support of his fiscal and even social policies.  In 1997 Bill Clinton said that abortion should be safe, legal and rare.  I think this captures the heart of America and should be our official position on this important issue.  Unfortunately, we have all been distracted by the extremists in both political parties and consequently have made no progress in this area. The left wants abortion on demand and the far right has a no tolerance approach without an exception for rape or incest.  While I believe life begins at conception, even I would be conflicted if the rape victim were my daughter. 

As these two sides battle, we have experienced over 54 million abortions in the US since Roe v. Wade in 1973.  Today, we abort 1.2 million lives per year vs. just 200,000 in 1970.  According to the CDC, that is more than the lives ended annually by heart disease and cancer, the top two killers in the US – combined. It’s time we looked for common ground for the sake of women everywhere and for the yet unborn.

Some would argue that a woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her own body.  Of course, that isn’t true.  If a woman decides to fill her body with alcohol and then drive a car, she begins to infringe on the rights of others.  Others would say abortion is between a woman and her doctor. Unfortunately, that isn’t true either.  When a man and woman conceive a child, a new person is created instantly.  This new person has a new and unique DNA that has never existed in the history of the world and will never exist again.  When a woman decides to have an abortion, she is infringing on that new person’s right to life, which is the first right enumerated in our Declaration of Independence.

The life of the mother is also better off without an abortion.  There are huge risks for women during and after an abortion.  Surgical risks include pelvic infection, heavy bleeding, perforation of the uterus, cervical injury, heart attack and death. Then there are psychological risks even after a successful surgery.  Women who have abortions are six times more likely to commit suicide than women who give birth.  They are also more likely to experience anxiety, depression, fear of exposure and eating disorders.  Many believe that there is also a significant increase in the risk of breast cancer.  Given these facts, I would love to hear the argument that the world needs more abortions.  So, if we all agree that we should have fewer abortions, how do we get there?

First, we need to consider the number one provider of abortions in the US, Planned Parenthood.  In 2010 they performed almost 330,000 abortions and executed a whopping 841 adoption referrals.  Since the government (actually you and me) gave them 487 million dollars in that same fiscal year, we could incent them to reduce the number of abortions they perform or lose that support.  They could do this easily by using their facilities to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies through education and by increasing the number of adoption referrals by honestly discussing all of the options available to the pregnant women they serve.  We should set a goal for them to reduce their abortions by 10% a year for the next five years as a requirement to get continued funding.  Personally, I would be willing to give them even more money if they were able to achieve these goals.

Second, our black leaders are righteously indignant about the fact that 38% of our prison population is African American while they only represent 13% of the overall population.  When it comes to abortion, however, the statistics are even worse, but black leadership is stunningly silent.  According to the CDC, over 40% of abortions are performed on black women and about one half of all black pregnancies end in abortion.  Where is the outcry, and where is the plan to address this terrible inequity.  Black leaders should commit to cut this number in half over the next five years.  This would still represent an imbalance but will save the lives of over 250,000 black children along the way. 

Finally, did you know that over 45% of abortions are performed on women who have already had at least one, and 8% are for women who have had three or more?  Could a national advertising campaign, proclaiming the preciousness of life and exposing the perils of multiple abortions, reduce these numbers by even 5% a year?  If these three strategies were pursued, in five years we could save 500,000 innocent lives and cut our current annual pace almost in half.  It will take commitment and resolve as a nation, but if one life is precious what value do we put on half a million?

Occupy Wall Street

Is the “Occupy Wall Street” a legitimate movement like the Tea Party or just a short-term delusional venting campaign being propped up unions and other far left ideologues?  As you might guess, the “View From the Middle” would say - yes.  First, let’s do a real comparison to the Tea Party.  The Tea Party has been in place for over two years now.  Whether you like it or not, about 15 percent of the country claim to be part of the Tea Party even according the SEIU weekly poll done on October 6^th of this year.  It is in every state and is totally volunteer.  It also has a very clear and achievable agenda.  Its 10 points include the elimination of excessive taxes and deficit spending, abide by the constitution and reduce the size of government.  All of which are achievable, even if you don’t agree with them.  Their rallies have also been orderly and peaceful, acquiring all the correct permits to assemble.  The rally in Washington DC arguably left the National Mall cleaner when the hundreds of thousands of participants left than when they came.

By contrast, the Occupy Wall Street group appears to be unorganized, belligerent and lacking in focus.  While all Americans should applaud their right to protest, that protest needs to win the hearts and minds of all of us with their character and direction.  They have trashed most of the areas that they have occupied including “relieving” themselves on police cars and in other public areas.  This by itself tarnishes its reputation, but it also boasted an original 13 point list of demands that included the global elimination of debt, free college education for all and absolute open boarders.  These demands with almost all the others are delusional and unachievable.  Interestingly, its 13^th demand involved union voting changes which seemed odd compared to its first 12 demands and hints at who might be sponsoring these people to protest for a month at a time.  If they truly want to become a movement like the Tea Party, they have a long way to go.  Not only do they need to last a lot longer and show they can influence an election, they need to clean up their act and develop a reasonable and rational platform.  The good news for them is that in recent days they have expressed their desire to do exactly that.  Good for them.

The bigger point is – do they have a point?  Actually, that depends on what their point is.  If they really think that Wall Street is our biggest problem, than I think their target is too small.  If they actually are protesting the disparity between the “haves” and “have-nots”, then they might have a point.  If you look at the ratio of CEO (Chief Executive Officer) pay and the average worker in the US, you will find that in 2010 the average CEO in the Fortune 500 made $325 for every one dollar the average worker for those companies made.  That sounds high, but some may tell you that ratio is down from last year, so it’s not bad.  The best way to deduce the truth is to compare that ratio over the long haul and to compare it to other countries.  That’s when we start to see the issue.

In 1965 that same ration in the US was just 24 to one and in 1978 it was 35 to one.  In my opinion, this is a ratio that should stay fairly static as long as both CEO’s and workers are earning the same dollar.  Unfortunately, in 1989 that ratio had grown to 71 to one and by the year 2000 it had ballooned to over 500 to one.  Again, that sounds bad, but how do we compare to other countries.  The answer is – not so good.  In 2000 the US ranked number one in this ratio at 531 to one.  Number two on the list was Brazil at 57 to one and number three was Venezuela at 54 to one.  That same year, France had a ratio of 16 to one, Germany was 11 to one and Britain was only 25 to one.  While I haven’t seen a similar ranking since 2000, the evidence would suggest that the relationships have not changed dramatically.

THIS is an indication that the Occupy Wall Street group might have a legitimate point, especially if companies in the US have laid off workers while paying their executives hefty salaries and bonuses.  Using this year’s numbers, if the average CEO in the Fortune 500 would cut his or her salary in half, they could hire over 160 workers, and still make over 160 times what their average worker earns.  Multiply that times all of those 500 companies, and that would create 80,000 jobs.  Would that help stimulate the economy?  I’ll let you decide.

Congressional Approval

Who or what is less popular than Congress?  The most recent Rasmussen poll revealed that only 5% of Americans approve of the job that Congress is doing these days.  That 5% is comprised of a small group of 1% of the country who actually believe Congress is doing an “excellent” job and another 4% who think they’ve done a good job.  Since I have to believe that the 1% group must consist of actual Congressional members, staff, relatives or the clinically insane, this means that their actual approval among average Americans could be closer to 4%. To give you some perspective on just how bad that number is, in December of 2008, Wiz Bang Politics reported that Rod Blagojevich’s approval rating was 8%, and that was after he was arrested on corruption charges.  Even Charles Manson, the crazed, sadistic murderer of Sharon Tate has a 9.5% approval rating, nearly double the favorability of Congress.  Yet, the saddest reality in this popularity disaster is that it is well deserved.

The average American has suffered through one disappointment after another with this Congress.  From the debt ceiling debates to the utter failure of the Super Committee to the almost unexplainable fiasco in the payroll tax holiday debate, we have witnessed a total inability to reach consensus in what I consider compromise rich environments. Unfortunately, this failure to agree on anything is just one aspect of our Congress’s dysfunctionality. 

This congress has managed to spend 11 trillion dollars of our money and add more to our debt in the last three years than all congresses from 1983 to 2008 combined.  And they did it without passing a budget.  This is almost unfathomable.  Nancy Pelosi never passed a budget in the House as Speaker and the Senate, under Harry Reid, is approaching three years without one.  Is this not the definition of out of control spending?

Now, there is a new book out called Throw Them All Out, which details how members of congress have used their insider knowledge to enrich themselves through lucrative stock trades.  It also exposes how members of congress have spent your money and mine in the form of earmarks to positively impact their own real estate investments.  Warning – this book will make you sick and will probably lower congressional approval rating even more, if that’s possible.

So, how can we the people help straighten out Congress?  It is actually pretty simple.  We need to elect candidates that will change Congress from the inside, because, unfortunately, Congress controls its own environment.  We need candidates that will run “against” Congress instead of “for” Congress by backing three changes in congressional practices like:

         -Real Blind trusts for Congressional portfolios – This will have at least two benefits for the American people.  First, it should purify the motives for Congressional members as they vote for any bills.  If we remove personal benefit as much as we possibly can, then bills are more likely to pass based on actual merit.  It will also remove the distraction of personal gain from our Congressmen and women’s minds so that they can focus on the real impact on their constituents.  We should also consider recusal from voting on any spending bills that can impact the value of personal property of our representatives.

         -All laws passed by Congress must also apply to Congress – Today, for example, Congress can pass a health care bill that applies to you and me, but leaves them with their existing Cadillac congressional coverage.  It’s easy pass laws when you can simply exempt yourself from its impact.  No More!  And then finally, and most importantly,

         -Term Limits – Our Founding Fathers never anticipated that members of Congress would make a lifetime career of politics.  Their original thought was that people would leave their professions temporarily and serve their country in the political process for a short period and then return to normal life and have to live with any laws they passed while they were in Washington.  The thought of extreme gain from their service was also foreign to them (Washington paid his own troops and Jefferson died in debt). Washington is a fantasyland where a billion dollars is an insignificant rounding error and every year spent there detaches our politicians from the reality that you and I live with every day. In my opinion, 12 years (two terms as a senator and six terms in the House) is sufficient time to accomplish any legislative agenda, and if you are unsuccessful, you need to move out and give someone else a chance.  Term limits would also increase the amount of time our representatives are working without the possibility of re-election, which should reduce the impact of special interest groups and increase the focus on “We the People”.

When you talk to the average American they can’t understand why these rules aren’t already in place already.  86% of Americans think that Congressional politicians are more interested in their careers than they are about helping others.  These rules will certainly appeal to this group and to the 95% that currently don’t approve of their performance.  The only people who seem to have an argument against these changes are the people who are in Washington now.  Is anyone surprised?

The Road to Perdition

As Shakespeare wrote in King Lear, “the road to perdition (hell, destruction) is paved with good intentions.”  While this is universally accepted for its obvious wisdom, its point is continually ignored.  One of the latest violations of this message may be the federal government’s attempt to increase home ownership in the US.  What could be wrong with that?  Who doesn’t want every American to own their own home?  This desire certainly qualifies as a good intention.

The hard way to accomplish this goal is to slowly improve the financial circumstances of millions of Americans so that they can actually afford to buy new homes.  The easy way is for the government to mandate banks to make home loans to people who can’t afford to pay those loans back.  As you might expect, the government took the easy way out in 1977 when they first passed the Community Reinvestment Act, which pushed banks to make loans in low to moderate income neighborhoods.  This led to a mini housing bubble in 1977 and 1978 when over 800,000 new homes were sold in America.

For perspective, from 1963 through 1995 the country produced a steady supply of new homes that averaged 603,000 new homes each year.  Over that 33-year history, new home production only exceeded that average by 20% three times, and two of those years were in ’77 and ’78. This artificial stimulation felt great, of course, because every new home employs three people for a year and brings in $90,000 in taxes to the treasury.  However, with every manufactured bubble comes the inevitable bust, and this mini bubble burst in 1981 and ’82 when the country’s new home production slumped to just over 400,000 per year.  This lost production resulted in over a million lost jobs from the bubble’s peak and certainly contributed to the recession of 1981-82.  But, did the government learn its lesson?  Of course not!

In fact, in 1994 and 1995 the government doubled down.  In 1994 Congress set out to rewrite and strengthen the Community Reinvestment Act, which was eventually passed in ’95 and was fortified by the Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) national homeowner strategy.  These two moves lead to an explosion of new home sales and for the next 12 years we would surpass the 603,000 home average by more than 20% every year. In fact, between 2003 and 2006 we built over a million homes each year and actually doubled that average in 2004 and 2005 as we built over 1.2 million homes each year.  Remember, we only exceeded that level of production three times in the 32 years between 1963 and 1995. 

And, after 12 years of overheating, no amount of governmental rationalization could have prevented the unavoidable correction.  Franklin Raines (Fannie Mae CEO) guaranteed us that, “home prices are only going to go up.”  Barney Frank assured us to the bitter end that nothing was wrong with this policy or with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the main vehicles of the policy, but the housing bust came.  It came just the same.

For the last four years, including 2011, we have averaged only 375,000 new homes per year and in the last two years we will average an anemic 320,000 homes.  That is 960,000 fewer homes from our peak in 2005.  Remember, each of these homes used to employ three people for a year and deliver $90,000 in taxes to the treasury.  That’s is a loss of almost three million jobs from the peak and over $86 billion in lost revenue to the federal government each year.  THAT is why many people, including me, believe that this manipulated housing bubble and bust is at the epicenter of our overall economic problems.  The road to destruction is paved with good intentions.

The moral of the story is - the federal government needs to get out of the fairy godmother business.  Beware of politicians who promise to eliminate suffering and poverty for all.  While their intentions may even be good, the unintended consequences of their programs will cause more pain than they relieve.  We need to think hard before we try to change our unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness, Health Care, a house to live in, a free College education, a guaranteed income, two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot.  The country can’t afford these kinds of good intentions.  We need to go back to the original intent for the role of our government; to enable freedom of choice and demand our citizens take personal responsibility for those choices.