McConnell-Reid Debt Plan Includes Catfood Commission II with Teeth

Posted: July 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Democratic Politics, Medicare, Psychopaths in charge, Republican politics, Social Security, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , | 23 Comments

Since Harry Reid is now on board, it’s looking more and more likely that the so-called “McConnell Plan” is the one the villagers favor in order to get the debt ceiling raised. Naturally, that is the plan that will allow Republicans to blame the President for raising the debt ceiling while continuing to procrastinate on dealing with the deficit. From ABC News:

This proposal has not yet been the subject of a lot of interest by House Republicans, but there are signs it may be gaining “traction,” according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal. “What is emerging as the most likely outcome is a plan based on Messrs. McConnell and Reid’s work, a Democratic official familiar with negotiations said,” the Journal’s Carol E. Lee and Janet Hook report. “It would include roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction, but would not come with tax increases or Medicare savings, the official said. It could include an extension of unemployment insurance, the official said, which costs $40 billion and would be offset by spending cuts.” http://on.wsj.com/p3l6u3

The problem for us ordinary citizens who have to live with whatever Congress decides, is that McConnell’s plan includes the establishment of a sequel to the Catfood Commission that is scarier than the first one.

The McConnell Plan: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would allow the debt ceiling to be raised by the president, with Congress voting disapprovingly three times before the 2012 election. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and McConnell are talking about creating a deficit commission that, like the base closing commission, would issue legislation that would be voted on up or down. They’re also discussing attaching spending cuts to the plan.

Greg Sargent quotes {shudder} Larry Kudlow on what the new Catfood Commission would be able to do.

Larry Kudlow, who’s plugged in with Congressional Republicans, scoops a key new detail about the emerging Mitch McConnell proposal to transfer control of the debt ceiling to the president:

McConnell is negotiating now with Sen. Harry Reid for a large-scale package that will allow the debt ceiling to rise unless overturned by a two-thirds vote. If a White House debt-ceiling deal comes through with $1.5 trillion of spending cuts, that will be part of the package. Right now, it’s not completed because enforceable spending caps have not been determined.

The key part of the new McConnell package is a joint committee to review entitlements in a massive deficit-reduction package. Unlike the Bowles-Simpson commission, this committee will be mandated to have a legislative outcome — an actual vote — that will occur early next year. No White House members. Evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. No outsiders. This will be the first time such a study would have an expedited procedure mandated with no amendments permitted. Also, tax reform could be air-dropped into this committee’s report.

A source with knowledge of the emerging proposal confirms to me that while nothing has been finalized, this is where the discussions are headed.

If I’m reading this right, what this means is that in order to make the McConnell proposal more palatable to conservatives, there would be a mandated bipartisan review of entitlements next year. The source tells me that if a majority of the committee can agree on recommendations for entitlement reform, the proposal would also mandate a Congressional vote on those recommendations.

So efforts to gut Social Security and Medicare will be postponed, but far from dead. And Congress will have to take up or down votes on the Catfood legislation–meaning no amendments permitted. We are so F’d.

Thursday Reads

Posted: July 14, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Democratic Politics, fundamentalist Christians, morning reads, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, Surreality, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 40 Comments

Good Morning!! The big news is still the deadlocked debt ceiling talks. There will be another meeting of the squabbling children tomorrow afternoon. Frankly, I’m hoping for some serious fireworks.

Meanwhile, Eric Cantor is grabbing points with the Tea Party, but everyone else is laughing at him. Check this out from Joe Klein (yes, he’s an idiot, but the Villagers listen to him):

David Rogers over at Politico, who has been doing this–extremely well–for about as long as I have, has word that the President of the United States monstered down on Representative Eric Cantor in Wednesday’s deficit ceiling squabble. This is so refreshing on so many levels. Cantor has been using this crisis to undermine his leader John Boehner, by playing the Tea Party/Grover Norquist recalcitrance card. The boy badly needed someone to get up in his face and Barack Obama, of all people, apparently did, telling Cantor, in no uncertain terms, that he’d veto any short term deficit ceiling fix or, indeed, any plan that did not include revenue increases. Then Obama walked out, or the meeting ended, depending on whom you talk to.

So what we have now is the Republican party in, yes, disarray–a word used to describe Democrats almost exclusively, back in the day before the crazies took over the GOP store. You have Cantor and the House Teasies opposing any revenue increases, including a tax loophole closing plan that Ronald Reagan and Edmund Burke would have smiled upon. You have Boehner, struck dumb apparently, after his attempt at bipartisan statesmanship with the President was greeted by tossed shoes and catcalls from the Teasies. You have Mitch McConnell, well, I’m speechless about Mitch McConnell…

Here’s this Kentucky dude whose every action, before Tuesday, painted him as one of the most cynical operators we’ve seen on Capitol Hill since Pitchfork Ben Tillman–and now, suddenly, he’s gone all rational on us, chiding his Republican forces (that means you, Eric) about leading the party to the electoral slaughterhouse if they don’t take this debt ceiling business seriously. He has proposed to place the responsibility for raising the debt ceiling solely on the President and let Obama run with that. This is looking more likely today than it did yesterday.

Jonathan Allen at Politico suggests that Cantor is overreaching.

As he has surged to the forefront of debt-limit negotiations and faced round-the-clock scrutiny on cable and radio talk shows, a fundamental question about House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s high-stakes political maneuvering is being discussed in the halls of power.

Is he building street cred with House Republicans or overplaying his hand?

The answer may be both. Cantor’s allies note that he’s been put in the spotlight by assignment — from Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama — not by choice. And they say he has gained political capital within the GOP conference.

Cantor has a lot riding on the outcome of the debt-limit negotiations. He’ll share in the public blame if they fall apart and the economy tanks, and he’ll face recriminations from his conservative base in the House if he cuts too soft a deal with the president.

At The New Republic, Jonathan Chait explains why “The Republican Crazy Is Not An Act.” Please don’t miss it.

John Boehner says working with the White House over the debt ceiling has been like “dealing with Jello,” whatever that means.

“Dealing with them the last couple months has been like dealing with Jell-o,” Boehner said. “Some days it’s firmer than others. Sometimes it’s like they’ve left it out over night.”

Boehner explained that talks broke down over the weekend because, he said, the president backed off entitlement reforms so much from Friday to Saturday, “It was Jell-o; it was damn near liquid.”

“By Saturday, they’d spent the previous day and a half just going backwards” on reforming entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

“The only thing they’ve been firm on is these damn tax increases,” the Speaker said.

I have no idea what he’s trying to say. Maybe he’s been spending too much time in the tanning salon.

The Villagers will keep on bickering, but real people are suffering out in the real world. There has been another terrible attack in Mumbai.

The blasts that rocked Mumbai killing 18 people and injuring 131 was a “coordinated terror attack” but officials have not singled out a group behind them, India’s home minister said Thursday….Three bomb blasts rocked India’s largest city in congested areas during the evening rush hour Wednesday.

The attackers used ammonium nitrate with a timer mechanism based on forensic evidence collected from the blast sites…

In Minnesota, the state government shut down two weeks ago because of lack of funds, and it is causing bars to shut down because they can’t renew their licenses.

By Wednesday, hundreds of bars, restaurants and liquor stores across Minnesota already had been stopped from buying new inventory due to expired permits the state has not renewed.

MillerCoors, the second largest brewer in the United States, failed to get its license to sell 39 brands in Minnesota renewed before a government shutdown over a budget impasse began with the new fiscal year on July 1.

“Without that brand label registration, their distribution and sales aren’t allowed to continue,” Doug Neville, a state public safety department spokesman, said on Wednesday.

From Bloomberg:

The stalemate, the longest of the nation’s six state government shutdowns since 2002, began July 1 after Democratic Governor Mark Dayton and Republican legislative leaders failed to resolve an impasse about how to address a $5 billion budget deficit. Republicans want spending cuts alone, and Dayton is pushing for taxes to preserve services.

Dayton yesterday traveled to Rochester, which is home of the Mayo Clinic, and Albert Lea, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Iowa border, to meet with people with disabilities and senior citizens to “discuss what is at stake in the state budget,” according to an e-mail from his office.

Meanwhile, legislative Republicans sent out an e-mail with charts showing the impact of the shutdown on areas including schools and parks in those two cities. It didn’t mention a booze drought.

Although businesses can sell alcohol with city liquor licenses, they can’t purchase new product without the state buyer’s card, Neville said in a telephone interview from St. Paul. Cards for 300 of 10,000 businesses have expired since the shutdown began July 1, and that will increase to 424 by the end of the month, Neville said.

Walter Shapiro writes that the whole thing is really Tim Pawlenty’s fault.

In addition to irrational politics and the state’s tradition of moralism, Pawlenty shares in the blame for Minnesota’s budgetary woes. And the GOP presidential candidate knows his financial stewardship is on the line: Late in the evening of June 30—just minutes before the Minnesota government officially shut down because of a budgetary impasse—Pawlenty held a hastily scheduled press conference at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport to try to shield himself from political attack over the shut-down. “Both in Washington, D.C., and in St. Paul, the Democrats continue their thirst for more spending and more taxes,” Pawlenty said in a boilerplate critique of his successor. “That’s not the right direction for Minnesota, and it’s not the right direction for our country.”

What the rhetorical onslaught was designed to hide was that, in truth, Pawlenty—like many governors in both parties juggling the books in the midst of the severe downturn—practiced budgetary legerdemain to avoid a statutorily forbidden deficit before he left office in January. Of course, it was hypocritical for Governor Pawlenty to eagerly bank $2.3 billion in federal stimulus money while Politician Pawlenty was denouncing Barack Obama for spending it. But, for all the partisan talking points over Pawlenty’s budgetary record, it strains credulity to believe that conservative GOP voters will blame him because Republicans in the Minnesota legislature held the line against a Democratic governor. In fact, Dayton may have caused more political mischief for Pawlenty with a recent unsuccessful proposal to help end the budgetary wars. Instead of his proposed 2 percent income-tax surcharge on millionaires, Dayton suggested that he could also accept a dollar-a-pack increase in the state cigarette tax. His purported inspiration: Pawlenty’s 2005 acceptance of a 75-cent-a-pack wholesale tax increase under the transparent guise of a Health Impact Fee. Undoubtedly relishing every moment, Dayton declared, “Governor Pawlenty even agreed to a cigarette tax increase. So there’s precedent for that.”

But, beyond the narrow implications for Pawlenty’s political fate, the broader national message from Minnesota is how easy it is for both parties to step off the cliff, heedless of the consequences. Already, there is talk that the government shutdown could last for months.

Will other states follow suit?

Finally, The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is suing Texas Governor Rick Perry over a religious rally he is planning to hold in Houston in early August.

Perry proclaimed August 6 as a “Day of Prayer and Fasting for our Nation to seek God’s guidance” and invited governors from across the nation to join his Christian prayer summit at Reliant Stadium.

“Given the trials that beset our nation and world, from the global economic downturn to natural disasters, the lingering danger of terrorism and continued debasement of our culture, I believe it is time to convene the leaders from each of our United States in a day of prayer and fasting, like that described in the book of Joel,” Perry said in June.

The legal complaint asks the federal court to declare unconstitutional Perry’s organization, promotion and participation in the event because it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

It says Perry’s active participation in the event violates the U.S. Constitution by “giving the appearance that the government prefers evangelical Christian religious beliefs over other religious beliefs and non-beliefs, including by aligning and partnering with the American Family Association, a virulent, discriminatory and evangelical Christian organization known for its intolerance.”

That should be a fun story to follow.

So… what are you reading and blogging about today?

Late Night: Moody’s Reviewing Downgrade of U.S. Credit Rating; Obama Slaps Down Eric Cantor.

Posted: July 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Republican politics, Surreality, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Eric Cantor

Bloomberg:

The U.S., rated Aaa since 1917, was put on review for the first time since 1995 on concern the debt threshold will not be raised in time to prevent a missed payment of interest or principal on outstanding bonds and notes even though the risk remains low, Moody’s said in a statement yesterday. The rating would likely be reduced to the Aa range and there is no assurance that Moody’s would return its top rating even if a default is quickly cured.

President Barack Obama is considering summoning congressional leaders to Camp David this weekend to work on a plan to raise the debt ceiling after yesterday’s negotiations on a deficit-cutting plan of at least $2 trillion stalled, according to two people familiar with the matter. A failure to raise the debt limit that causes a default may lead to slower economic growth and another financial crisis.

“It’s obviously very serious in so many different ways,” said James Caron, head of U.S. interest-rate strategy at Morgan Stanley in New York, one of 20 primary dealers that trade bonds with the Federal Reserve. “Most people still believe there will be some type of an agreement struck to avoid all this stuff, and that’s what the market’s banking on.”

Meanwhile, according to the NYT, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

warned on Wednesday of a “huge financial calamity” if President Obama and the Republicans cannot agree on a budget deal that allows the federal debt ceiling to be increased. Moody’s, the ratings agency, threatened a credit downgrade, citing a “rising possibility” that no deal would be reached before the government’s borrowing authority hits its limit on Aug. 2.

The one piece of good news is that President Obama may be finally waking up to the reality that Republicans are totally insane and there is no point in negotiating with them.

the latest bipartisan negotiating session on Wednesday evening ended in heightened tension, if not outright discord. Republicans said Mr. Obama had abruptly walked out in an agitated state; Democrats described the president as having summed up with an impassioned case for action before bringing the meeting to a close and leaving.

Politico has a better description of what happened–basically, Obama told lit into Eric Cantor and brought him up short for once.

When Cantor said the two sides were too far apart to get a deal that could pass the House by the Treasury Department’s Aug. 2 deadline — and that he would consider moving a short-term debt-limit increase alongside smaller spending cuts — Obama began to lecture him.

“Eric, don’t call my bluff,” the president said, warning Cantor that he would take his case “to the American people.” He told Cantor that no other president — not Ronald Reagan, the president said — would sit through such negotiations.

That’s Cantor’s version. Democratic sources said that

“Cantor’s account of tonight’s meeting is completely overblown. For someone who knows how to walk out of a meeting, you’d think he’d know it when he saw it,” a Democratic aide said. “Cantor rudely interrupted the president three times to advocate for short-term debt ceiling increases while the president was wrapping the meeting. This is just more juvenile behavior from him and Boehner needs to rein him in, and let the grown-ups get to work.”

Now here’s the kicker:

“Obama lit him up. Cantor sat in stunned silence,” said an official in the meeting. “It was incredible. If the public saw Obama he would win in a landslide.”

Maybe Obama really does have some balls guts? Maybe it just took a snot-nosed squirrely creep like Cantor to get a rise out of him. It does seem that for once Obama has managed to force the Republicans into a corner by offering cuts in Medicare and Social Security and then threatening not to write checks in August.

Stay tuned. There will be more discussions at the White House tomorrow afternoon. Maybe it’s time for Obama to do the the Chicago way. The heck with bipartisanship–time for some major arm-twisting. Just raise the frickin’ debt ceiling and be done with it.

Tuesday Reads: Cantor’s Conflict, Libertarian Cruelty, bin Laden’s DNA, and a Cold Case Solved

Posted: July 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Central Intelligence Agency, children, Corporate Crime, Crime, Economy, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, Foreign Affairs, income inequality, morning reads, Pakistan, Psychopaths in charge, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 36 Comments

Good Morning!! I’ll take my coffee iced today, because it’s hotter than hell here in the Boston area. And about 110 percent humidity. OK, let’s get to the news.

The Washington Post has a laudatory profile of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and his refusal to negotiate on raising the Federal debt ceiling–without ever mentioning that Cantor stands to make lots of money if the U.S. defaults on its debts.

Last month, Cantor walked out of talks led by Vice President Biden. Cantor said the reason was Democrats’ insistence on raising taxes as part of a deal to increase the national debt ceiling.

Then, last week, Cantor urged House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to reject a possible “grand bargain” with President Obama, which could have included tax increases. Boehner pulled Republicans out of those talks.

Now, as Cantor joins other leaders at the White House for near-daily summits in the third different grouping of negotiators, his moves have revealed him as a third major player in a legislative drama that had been dominated by Obama and Boehner. Where Boehner has sought to define what Republicans can do with their newfound power, Cantor, the House’s ambitious number-two, wants to underline what Republicans would never do.

So what is Cantor’s negotiating strategy?

On Monday, with a potential default less than a month away, Cantor was asked to identify compromises that Republicans had offered to help negotiations along.

He told reporters that the negotiation itself was a compromise.

“I don’t think the White House understands how difficult it is for fiscal conservatives to say they are going to vote for a debt-ceiling increase,” Cantor said.

Gee, it wasn’t all that hard to increase the debt ceiling again and again under Bush, now was it? But maybe in those days Cantor wasn’t betting against the U.S. in his financial investments. It’s very troubling that the Post didn’t mention Cantor’s humongous conflict of interest.

According to a new Washington Post-Pew poll, increasing numbers of Americans are “very concerned” about a U.S. default, but they are also “concerned” that raising the limit will lead to out-of-control spending.

The twin, divergent, concerns complicate the political calculus for the White House and congressional leaders as they attempt to strike an agreement. Nearly eight in 10 Americans are worried about raising the debt limit, and about three-quarters are concerned about not doing so.

Asked to choose, 42 percent see greater risk in a potential default stemming from not raising the debt limit, a seven-point increase from a Post-Pew poll six weeks ago. Slightly more, 47 percent, express deeper concern about lifting the limit, but the gap has narrowed.

Sixty-six percent of Republicans worry more about raising the debt limit than the U.S. defaulting on its debts. {sigh…}

Hipparchia has a wonderful post at Corrente that is an extended metaphor for libertarian attitudes about health care, specifically in reaction to the writings of a libertarian from the CATO Institute, Michael F. Cannon on the new Oregon health care plan. Here is the relevant quote from Cannon that set her off.

Michael F Cannon, of Cato@Liberty :

The OHIE establishes only that there are some (modest) benefits to expanding Medicaid (to poor people) (after one year). It tells us next to nothing about the costs of producing those benefits, which include not just the transfers from taxpayers but also any behavioral changes on the part of Medicaid enrollees, such as reductions in work effort or asset accumulation induced by this means-tested program. Nor does it tell us anything about the costs and benefits of alternative policies.

Reduction in work effort?? This would be really funny if Cannon weren’t so deadly serious. Providing health care to poor people means that more of them are just going to spend their days hanging out in parks, yakking on their cell phones , I guess. So, Libertarians are in favor of liberty for themselves and wage slavery for anybody else. Good to know.

Please go read the whole thing if you have time. It’s well worth the effort. We live in a world of selfish, greedy narcissistic fops. How can the country survive them?

Joseph Cannon has a short but pithy post on the media’s obsession with Casey Anthony being found not guilty. He then points out that the media has completely ignored the fact that

In 1995, when the Presidency was in the hands of the despised Bill Clinton, government regulators overseeing skullduggery on Wall Street referred 1,837 cases to the Justice Department for prosecution. That number has gone down. Between 2007 and 2010, the Justice Department has received just 72 referrals a year (on average).

Gosh. How can this be? I guess investment bankers are simply more honest than they used to be.

You won’t see this issue discussed on CNN. It’s not newsworthy.

I did not know that. Thank you Joseph Cannon. F&ck you CNN (and HLN and Nancy Grace).

Here’s an interesting story from The Guardian UK: CIA organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden’s family DNA

As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the “project” in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.

The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has since been arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) for co-operating with American intelligence agents.

Relations between Washington and Islamabad, already severely strained by the Bin Laden operation, have deteriorated considerably since then. The doctor’s arrest has exacerbated these tensions. The US is understood to be concerned for the doctor’s safety, and is thought to have intervened on his behalf.

The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaida courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound last summer. The agency monitored the compound by satellite and surveillance from a local CIA safe house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that Bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country.

DNA from any of the Bin Laden children in the compound could be compared with a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010, to provide evidence that the family was present.

Jeralyn at Talk Left has finally decided that Obama deserves to get a pink slip. Yes, I know, she should have known better. But please go read anyway.

I’m going to end with a story about a long ago murdered child and how the case has been solved–54 years later. Maria Ridulph disappeared in 1957 when she was 7 years old. Maria and her best friend Kathy were playing on the street one day.

Kathy Chapman, who was 8 at the time, recalled that she and Maria were under a corner streetlight when a young man she knew as “Johnny” offered them a piggyback ride. Chapman, now 61 and living in St. Charles, Ill., told the AP she ran home to get mittens and that when she returned, Maria and the man were gone.

Maria’s disappearance and death had a powerful effect on her small community.

Charles “Chuck” Ridulph always assumed the person who stole his little sister from the neighborhood corner where she played and dumped her body in a wooded stretch some 100 miles away was a trucker or passing stranger — surely not anyone from the hometown he remembers as one big, friendly playground.

And, after more than a half century passed since her death, he assumed the culprit also had died or was in prison for some other crime.

On Saturday, he said he was stunned by the news that a one-time neighbor had been charged in the kidnapping and killing that captured national attention, including that of the president and FBI chief. Prosecutors in bucolic Sycamore, a city of 15,000 that’s home to a yearly pumpkin festival, charged a former police officer Friday in the 1957 abduction of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph after an ex-girlfriend’s discovery of an unused train ticket blew a hole in his alibi.

Maria Ridulph

From the Seattle Times:

A judge in Seattle set bail Monday at $3 million for Jack Daniel McCullough, of Seattle, a former police officer who denies he is the man Illinois police have been seeking in the 1957 slaying of a young girl….

McCullough, 71, a former police officer in Milton and Lacey, has been living in North Seattle and working as a night watchman in a senior-housing facility, Four Freedoms.

McCullough, 18 at the time of the girl’s death, had been a suspect early in the investigation. He lived about a block from where the girl disappeared and matched the description of a man seen at the site.

At the time, police did not show Maria’s best friend Kathy a picture of their suspect. But last year, they showed her a picture of the teenaged McCullough (then using the last name Tessier) and she recognized him.

That’s all I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

“If you want to have a party, have a party but don’t ask me to pay for it.”

Posted: July 11, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, fetus fetishists, Planned Parenthood, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

NH Executive Council with Governor Lynch

New Hampshire’s all-male Executive Council has voted to terminate the state’s contract with Planned Parenthood. As a result, Planned Parenthood will no longer be able to offer birth control services.

The Republicans that compose New Hampshire’s five-member executive council voted 3-2 to reject funding for Planned Parenthood’s six clinics in the state on June 22.

The council, a vestige of the state’s colonial government that is independent of the governor, must approve all state contracts greater than $10,000.

“I am opposed to abortion,” said Raymond Wieczorek, a council member who voted against the contract. “I am opposed to providing condoms to someone. If you want to have a party, have a party but don’t ask me to pay for it.”

Wieczorek is the second man from the right behind the Governor.

Under federal law, Planned Parenthood cannot use government funds to provide abortion, and Frizzell said it the group is subject to regular audits to ensure that only private money is used to pay for abortions.

You can read about the duties and powers of the NH Executive Council on their website here.

It sounds like the NH governor is a rather weak executive, but I don’t know that much about it.

From the Concord (NH) Monitor:

The six Planned Parenthood centers in New Hampshire stopped dispensing contraception last week after the Executive Council rejected a new contract with the organization.

Planned Parenthood had operated under a limited retail pharmacy license that was contingent on having a state contract, said Steve Trombley, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. Two weeks ago, the all-Republican Executive Council voted 3-2 against a new contract that would have provided the organization $1.8 million in state and federal money for the two years starting this month.

This will really hurt low income women in New Hampshire.

The Planned Parenthood contract, which accounts for about 20 percent of its annual New Hampshire budget, would have paid for education, distributing contraception, and the testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections. The organization’s abortion practice is paid for by private donations, Trombley said, with audits ensuring no public money is used.

Last year, Planned Parenthood provided contraception for 13,242 patients in New Hampshire, Trombley said. The organization also provided 6,112 breast exams, 5,548 screenings for cervical cancer and 18,858 tests for sexually transmitted infections. If the contract is not renewed, Planned Parenthood will drastically reduce its services, Trombley said. The organization employs 80 people in New Hampshire.

NH Planned Parenthood charges clients on a sliding scale based on yearly income. Seventy percent of clients pay nothing or a very small amount because they are under the state’s poverty line of $10,890 for an individual and $22,350 for a family.

The War on Women by the PLUBs continues unabated.

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