Tell the Tea Party Wing of the GOP to grow up

Tea Party Member

 According to the American people, it's time for Republicans to grow up. Instead of threatening to shut down the government if they don't get their way, we recommend that the Tea Party wing of the GOP take a conflict resolution course and learn how adults handle differences.

The American people are increasingly fed up. From Taylor Marsh:

THE QUINNIPIAC poll released today couldn’t be clearer and neither could the foreshadowing. The Republican right is making an error in judgment on shutting down the government, though Speaker Boehner will likely ruin Senator Ted Cruz‘s party. At our house that means my husband won’t lose work, which matters very much to us, though we’re hardly the only ones paying attention to this issue.

Nearly seven in 10 Americans — 69 percent — oppose shutting down the government over funding for Planned Parenthood, according to the results of a new national Quinnipiac University poll released Monday. But as far as cutting off funding to the group, 52 percent said they would oppose doing so, compared with 41 percent who supported such an action. Women opposed such an action by a wide margin — 60 percent to 34 percent — while men responding to the survey supported an end to federal funding 49 percent to 44 percent. [Politico]

Several of my friends and I signed the petition below from DCCC Action; here's your opportunity to sign on and tell the Republicans to grow up:




http://action.dccc.org/stop-republican-shutdowns Thank you for your support!

DCCC Action

Paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee | 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, DC 20003 (202) 863-1500 | www.dccc.org | Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Standing with Planned Parenthood

Image courtesy of Planned Parenthood.

I had some firsthand experience a couple of years ago with the opponents of Planned Parenthood, and I possibly helped defuse a confrontation between a group of locals protesting the establishment of an area clinic by that venerable organization.

But feminist senatorial candidate Shelley Berkley is right. Today’s Republican Party has gone too far in its attacks on Planned Parenthood. I signed the petition linked to in the letter from Berkely, forwarded to me this morning by the Nation. 

I hope Katalusis readers will also take this opportunity to stand up for the rights of all women to adequate health care:

Dear Fellow Progressive,

The Republican Party wants to put Planned Parenthood out of business.

Already, the GOP’s witch hunt gave right-wingers at the Susan G. Komen Foundation cover to withdraw their support of Planned Parenthood’s cancer screenings for low-income women, nearly ending hundreds of thousands of breast cancer screenings and mammogram referrals for woman across the country.

It’s sick. It’s ugly. And if we don’t stop it, women are going to die.

Click here to sign my petition calling on Republicans to stop their witch hunt against Planned Parenthood.

 

Let’s be very clear: This isn’t about abortion. After all, just three percent of Planned Parenthood’s work is abortion-related.

This is about preventing low-income women from getting basic health services without permission from radical right-wing social conservatives. Ninety percent of what Planned Parenthood does is preventative care -- including 770,000 pap tests, 4 million tests for sexually transmitted diseases, and, yes, 750,000 breast exams just last year.

The bottom line: You know women who are alive today because of Planned Parenthood.

But it seems that the radical right-wingers behind this witch hunt care more about controlling women's bodies than they do about keeping those women healthy or even saving their lives.

We must take action right now to stop this sick and ugly attack on Planned Parenthood before it costs women their lives. Click here to sign the petition now.

It’s hard to believe that, in the year 2012, a group of right-wing men are out to stop women from getting breast exams because of their radical ideology.

It's hard to believe that, in the year 2012, elected officials care more about a political agenda than saving women's lives.

And I refuse to believe that we are going to let them get away with it.

Please sign my petition today -- and let’s stop this sick and ugly witch hunt.

Thank you for taking action to protect women in America.

Shelley

Paid for by Berkley for Senate

Contributions or gifts to Berkley for Senate are not tax deductible

Federal Budget agreement: the EPA and Planned Parenthood escape Republican axe

In reaching a federal budget agreement Friday evening, the AP reports:

On side issues – "riders," the negotiators called them – the Democrats and the White House rebuffed numerous Republican attempts to curtail the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency.

They also sidetracked their demand to deny federal funds to Planned Parenthood. Under the accord, the issue will come to a vote in the Senate under terms guaranteed to end in its defeat.

How Catholic opposition to reproductive rights of women could backfire

Anthony Stevens Arroyo is an American Catholic scholar and Professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College and Distinguished Scholar of the City University of New York.

In his article, Catholics and Planned Parenthood for On Faith (Washington Post), Arroyo addresses the recent cut in federal public funding to Planned Parenthood and shows how Catholic opposition to abortion could ultimately have a negative effect on the 67 percent of funding to Catholic Charities that comes from public sources.

The Republican-controlled Congress recently cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood and the vote has been projected as a great victory for Catholic opposition to abortion. However, the premise behind this proposed legislation threatens to send Catholicism back to the days of the Know Nothings in the 1840s.

At issue is whether a corporation like Planned Parenthood can receive government funding for some services and still spend privately raised money on others. Until now, the answer to that question has been, "Yes!" Just like food stamps are used to pay for milk while cigarettes must be paid for with a person's own cash, common sense has generally recognized that accepting government subsidies or grants does not strip a person or an agency of the freedom of how to spend their own money. The money is in two different piles. This Republican vote, however, stripped Planned Parenthood of federal funding for mammograms, pre-natal care, nutrition programs, etc. because 2% of private money funds abortions. The agency was denied the right to put money any longer into two separate piles.

How do we know that today's law that gives government the power to take away an agency's freedom to spend its own money will never be used against the Catholic Church? Some 67% of Catholic Charities funding comes from government sources. But Catholic teaching also supports efforts to serve immigrants, even if they have no longer have documents to work or reside here. Similarly, the Catholic bishops advocate a path to citizenship for the undocumented. What is to prevent the Republican foes of immigration reform from cutting off all funding for Catholic Charities by using the same logic that attacked Planned Parenthood? After all, the nature of law is that it applies to everyone. To argue that the Catholic Church will be treated differently under the law than Planned Parenthood is to suggest that religion is established in the United States - which is clearly unconstitutional.

I also reject the idea that Republican lawmakers could never pass legislation that repudiated Catholic teaching. In my district, the congressman is Lou Barletta, former mayor of Hazelton, PA and an implacable foe of Catholic social justice for Latino immigrants. At an October 2007 forum sponsored by the University of Notre Dame, Barletta demeaned not only the Church's social justice but also disparaged Cardinal Mahoney. Barletta boasted to me before a later public debate I had with him that he "set the Cardinal straight." Not exactly the obedience to the Ordinary Magisterium you expect from the pious laity!

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