What a smackdown!

One of the most fascinating — indeed, illuminating — exchanges to come out of the House Oversight Committee hearing Tuesday.  Here is Chairman Darrell Issa grilling Jonathan Gruber:

ISSA:  When you made these repeated comments [We wrote ObamaCare in such a way as to hide its costs; we counted on the American voter being stupid enough to believe us; lying is a huge political advantage, etc.] in an intellectual community with lots of other like-minded people, did anyone ever come up to you and tell you that what you were saying was inappropriate?

GRUBER:  Not that I recall.

ISSA:  I guess what you said was popular in that community.

What a smackdown!  But so true.  The “intellectual” class believes they do no wrong when they lie to you, because they are obviously so much smarter than you.

In the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldburg described the real genius of the smarter-than-you “intellectual” class:

[Gruber] represents the arrogance of the expert class writ large.  They create systems, terms and rules that no normal person on the outside can possibly penetrate.  They make life and living more complicated and then get rich and powerful off of their ability to navigate that complexity.  Time and again they sell simplicity and security and deliver more complications and insecurity, which in turn creates demand for more experts promising simplicity and security the Gruberians never deliver.

It’s not that Americans are stupid, it’s that the experts have been geniuses at creating a system that makes normal people feel stupid.

FAB contributor Newt Gingrich explains how life could soon be much better if we can overcome bureaucracy, over-regulation, and restriction of innovation and entrepreneurship.

“Poised for a Breakout”–from Obamaism
by Newt Gingrich

President Obama must have been cruising Amazon.com this weekend.  Or at least so it would seem from his remarks to the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

“In a lot of ways, America is poised for a breakout,” he said.  “We are in a good position to compete around the world in the 21st century.  The question is, are we going to realize that potential?”

If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, that idea will sound very familiar.  It is the argument I have been making since last spring, and the subject of my new book, Breakout.

The President is right that America is poised for a breakout.  Advances in science, engineering, and technology offer incredible opportunities in learning, health, energy production, transportation, and many other fields.  These breakthroughs could mean we are on the edge of a dramatically better world in which many of our current problems simply disappear.

President Obama is also correct that the big political question facing Americans is whether “we are going to realize that potential”–whether we will choose to break out.

But what the President apparently doesn’t see is that he represents breakdown–the greatest threat to our potential future.  That government as bloated as our current one will inevitably break down may be the chief lesson of Obamaism.

There is a breakdown of big government bureaucracy, a breakdown of competence, a breakdown of common sense and defined purpose in government, and a breakdown of the rule of law.

Practically every day we are reminded that the government is simply incompetent to do all the tasks it has assumed to itself.  The disastrous launch of Healthcare.gov is just the latest example.  Even with three and a half years to build the website, the key people in charge failed for a variety of reasons–some legal, some bureaucratic, many political–and rather than admitting their failure, they foisted the broken system on the country anyway.

The same breakdown in competence extends across the federal government.  It’s the reason 20 to 25 percent of Earned Income Tax Credit payments by the IRS are improper.  It’s how the same agency managed to send “a total of 655 tax refunds to a single address in Lithuania, and 343 refunds…to a lone address in Shanghai.”  In the private-sector, we have systems to fight this level of incompetence.  In the broken down big government bureaucracy, the failure is simply expected, and it continues year after year.

In some respects, the problem is bipartisan.  We saw it in federal response to Hurricane Katrina under the last administration.  Yet only one party believes we should increase Americans’ reliance on broken systems.

Beyond the breakdown in competence, there is a breakdown of common sense in the federal government.  Programs continue decades after they have outlived their usefulness, like the national “raisin reserve” on which the Washington Post reported recently.  It requires raisin farmers to hand over large portions of their annual harvests to “a farm program created to solve a problem during the Truman administration, and never turned off.”  There are hundreds of similarly pointless programs hidden in the bureaucracy.

Finally, there is a breakdown in the rule of law, as we have seen over and over under the Obama presidency–from the IRS targeting conservative organizations, to EPA officials releasing personal information on thousands of farmers to environmental activist groups, to the Justice Department conducting criminal investigations of journalists, to the President’s unilateral suspensions of parts of immigration law, welfare law, and even his own health care law.

As the champion of bureaucratic, centralized, and often extralegal solutions, President Obama is the leading representative of the breakdown that could prevent America from seeing a breakout like the one he predicted yesterday.

As I argue in Breakout, I do believe life could soon be much better for all Americans, if we can overcome the prison guards of the past keeping us trapped in bureaucracy, over-regulation, and restriction of innovation and entrepreneurship.

There is enormous potential for learning science and e-learning, personalized and regenerative medicine, American energy production, breakthroughs in transportation such as self-driving cars, and even a private space industry.

But this will require big changes in how we organize government–changes that President Obama certainly will not make.  In fact, he’ll take us further in the wrong direction.  That’s why we won’t know the answer to his question–”Are we going to realize that potential?”–until the elections of 2014 and 2016.

Now that ObamaCare is proving itself to be the disaster we all feared … in fact, even worse than we feared … Ted Cruz is smelling like a rose.  People will long remember who stood up and spoke the loudest in protesting this train wreck.

It is good that there were no Republican fingerprints on this piece of criminal legislation.  But that is not enough.  In politics, messaging and timing are critical.  You have to make  your case in a memorable way at the right time.  If nobody remembers what you said, then what difference did it make?

Ted Cruz was one man who went out and fought hardest in those critical months leading up to the ObamaCare train wreck, while others were content to sit on the sideline and wait for the disaster to come.  Now that the disaster is becoming apparent to all, who will they remember fought against it?  Ted Cruz.  Well played!

Here’s an advertisement from the Conservative Campaign Committee:

Insurance cost almost triples, from $333/month to $965 for this family.

Remember that the current version of ObamaCare is only Phase I.  Phase II comes later.  The purpose of Phase I is to create such chaos in the health care industry that people will scream for relief.

When that happens, the statists who created this mess will blame the insurance companies and demand a new round of changes to protect consumers from the evil insurance companies.  (What we really need is protection from evil government, but that will never be mentioned.)

Statists will insist that only government can be trusted with something this important, and they will attempt to force all of us into a single-payer, government-run, health-care rationing system.  This system will of course be “affordable,” because “somebody else” will be paying.  That’s Phase II.

Notice that the statists who created the mess will blame everyone but themselves and will claim that only they can fix the problem.  Will the American public be stupid enough to fall for it?  We shall see.

One of my nieces asked me a few weeks back how ObamaCare would be different from the status quo of health care in America.  Good question.   Certainly the status quo isn’t optimal.  But it’s still the best health care system on the planet.  And ObamaCare will make it much worse.  Here’s a partial answer to her question.

The status quo is this:

1. If somebody needs medical attention, they can show up at the emergency room, the hospital is legally required to render assistance, and the cost is borne by the paying customers, and
2. Low-income people can apply for and receive needs-based assistance from Medicaid or one of its state substitutes, e.g., TennCare.

I have some second-hand experience with health-care delivery to a low-income person.  A friend of mine did not have insurance to cover needed cancer treatments.  He received the treatments anyway, as needed, and now he pays a little bit each month toward his bills.  He will never completely pay off those bills, but he will do what he can.  He is thankful for the life-saving medical care he received.  He has since qualified for Medicare.

I’m not arguing for the status quo.  I believe that for most Americans, the dominance of the third-party payers (either the Government for those on Medicare or insurance companies for everybody else) has driven the cost of health care much higher (in fact, many times higher) than it should be.  There are two big reasons for this.

1. First, there is zero cost competitiveness in the health-care delivery system.  If I wanted to look for a low-cost provider, I couldn’t do it.  The system wouldn’t let me.  When our son was one year old, we were told (falsely, it turns out) that he needed a test to confirm reflux disease, but they wouldn’t tell me what it would cost.  I needed to know, because insurance coverage for his condition was limited under a preexisting condition clause.  But they still wouldn’t tell me.  Is there anything else we buy where the supplier steadfastly refuses to tell us the cost before we buy it?  They get away with it because too few people have the slightest motivation to even ask, “What will it cost?”
2. Second, the nearly universal customer disinterest in the cost of medical care means that most of us will buy as much of it as is offered.  I have myself purchased several unnecessary and overly expensive tests because (a) the tests were offered and (b) I had no incentive to pass them up.  I guarantee that I would not have had those tests had I been required to put down a 20% co-pay.  We must find a way to reinstate cost incentives/competition back into medical care, but still provide health care to people who truly cannot afford to pay.  By health care, I mean health care, not wealth insurance for people who choose to forego health insurance premiums in order to purchase beer, cigarettes, cable TV, cell phones, etc.

Now, back to your question.  Here are just a few of the ways that ObamaCare will be different from the status quo:

First, it will hasten our decline into financial insolvency.  We don’t have the money in the Federal treasury to pay for it.  We know it will cost hundreds of billions of additional dollars to implement, and it does nothing to reinstate cost incentives back into the system.  Let’s step away from health care and look at the big picture.  Every election cycle, one political party makes it a point to claim that an ever-growing number of Americans are entitled — entitled, mind you — to a laundry list of free stuff.  Each election year, the number of “entitled” people grows larger and the list of free stuff gets longer.  And who is going to pay for all that “free” stuff?  It is to be paid for by an ever-smaller, ever more despised — despised, mind you — group of producers.  Can this continue?  Consult your own common sense.  If you need an example, see what’s been happening to Greece.

The ever-smaller group of producers couldn’t keep up with all of the Government spending even during the good economic times.  In the early to mid 2000s, the Government revenues were setting record levels, and we still had deficits.  During the more normal times, we have no hope of keeping up with spending.  And even less hope during the inevitable recessions that cycle around.  The cost of ObamaCare will only grow our debt even more, making our next recession even deeper and more painful.

As much as we would like to wipe away every human need in this country, there is simply not enough money to do it.  In the 1960s, it was estimated that if we “invested” 60 billion dollars into poverty programs, that poverty could be wiped out.  Trillions of dollars later, I could argue that the problem is worse now than then.  In fact, the Government instituted expensive programs that actually made poverty worse.  I have no reason to believe that ObamaCare won’t make health care worse than it is now.

Second, the implementation of ObamaCare will reinforce the belief that some people are “entitled” to the wealth created by others.  Without any incentives to limit their medical “needs,” they will demand more and more “free” services … “free” to them but not to those of us who will be paying the bill.  What is President Obama’s plan to deal with all the new demand for limitless health care?  Hire new doctors?  No.  His plan is to hire 10,000 new IRS agents.  (The CBO has said that the IRS would spend $0.5 billion to $1.0 billion to enforce the ObamaCare law.)

Third, it will create a new bureaucracy to administer all the rules.  The law itself was 1,000 – 2,400 pages (depending on who’s counting and what’s counted) of stuff that few, if any, members of Congress even bothered to read.  The final regulations will be tens of thousands of pages.  In fact, bureaucrats had generated 13,000 pages of new regulations as of July 2012, and they’re not done yet.  Who will be tasked with making sure all those regulations are complied with?  Just to simply stay out of jail, medical providers will be forced to hire additional compliance staff.  (Medical providers are already being forced to hire new staff to meet the ObamaCare electronic medical record requirements.)  Of course, the Government will have to hire their own army of enforcement officers.  After all, what good are regulations if they are not enforced?  And guess who will pay for all of that!

Fourth, you mentioned that you have yourself benefitted from the ObamaCare law, because it forced your parents to pay for the cost of your insurance for more years than would otherwise have been the case.  There was no net benefit here; there was only a shift in the costs from one person to another.  Plus, it only reinforced the idea that Government action could create “free” stuff for your benefit.  If you are getting “free” stuff, then others will line up to receive it as well.  I’m not criticizing you for taking advantage of the free stuff that you will eventually have to pay for — with interest payments and bureaucrat labor costs added on, you and perhaps your children will be forced to pay for it many times over — but I’m merely pointing out that “free” benefits aren’t really free at all.  You will pay dearly.

Fifth, ObamaCare drives up costs by mandating that all insurance coverage includes everything imaginable, even free contraceptives.  (The very idea that the guy down the street should be forced to pay for my contraceptives is foreign to me.)  The Government is deciding that you should have an unlimited list of free services, and they make it palatable for you by pretending that somebody else will actually pay for it.  Apply the same kind of thinking to your auto insurance policy.  Imagine that you could buy car insurance that paid for every imaginable automotive expense, including oil changes, new tires, minor repairs, major repairs, etc.  Would you buy it?  No way!  You would never buy that policy because it would be prohibitively expensive.  It would be great for the automotive repair shops, because you and all your friends would be lined up around the corner, demanding that the scratch on your door and the little rust spot on your fender be fixed, but this would drive up the cost of insurance so high, you would not buy it (unless you were forced to do so by law).  A free person acting in a free market would almost always choose a reasonably-priced automobile insurance policy to cover only the catastrophic losses, and accept personal responsibility to pay for everything else.  Most people would agree to pay for such nonsense only if they were forced to do so under threat of incarceration.  It is just as true for health insurance; the only way they can force this system upon us is to (a) lie to us by saying that “somebody else” is actually paying for it, and (b) force us to pay for it under threat of incarceration.  That’s what all those new IRS agents are all about.

Sixth, ObamaCare forces people — employees are people, too — to purchase abortions and contraceptives, a clear violation of conscience for many Americans.  People shouldn’t have to choose between closing their businesses (i.e., firing their employees) and violating their consciences.

Seventh, when this is all over, it will create a gigantic transfer of wealth to the abortion industry.  At $450 per abortion, the industry generates revenues of roughly $550 million (not including premiums for late-term abortions).  I’m convinced that ObamaCare will be manipulated to force that number up to more than $7 billion. (Link here for an explanation.)  Keep in mind that the abortion industry sells abortions at $450 apiece, not $5,472 apiece (the cost of a similar non-abortive procedure), because abortions, unlike every other medical procedure, are paid for directly by the consumer and thus are subject to the normal pressures of consumer economics.  When cost competition in the abortion market is gone, prices will rise accordingly.

Eighth, the cost burden to employers will incentivize them to hire fewer people, thus increasing the unemployment rate.  Who pays for that?  The greatest burden will fall on minorities and young people, because they suffer the greatest rates of unemployment.  But we will all pay a price, because the fewer people working, the more the rest of us have to pay to keep the ship of state afloat.  Worse than the financial cost of unemployment is the human cost: unrealized personal growth and development.  People who are not working lose the opportunity to learn, grow, and increase their value to some future employer.  They are stuck.

Ninth, by decoupling bad behavior from its costs, you only incentivize more bad behavior.  There will never be any shortage of human needs around us.  Some are due to circumstances beyond people’s control, but most are the result of bad behavior.  In this case, bad behavior can include laziness … simply deciding not to work and letting somebody else pay the freight.  When you make it easier for people to leave the ranks of the producers and join the ranks of the “entitled,” you can be sure that more of them will do it.  We all pay for that.  We all lose.  Such people lose their self-respect.  Their children learn dependency instead of self-sufficiency.  We lose their participation in the economy.  Our culture degrades.  We see the victims of degraded culture all around us.

Bad behavior also includes health-destroying activities like drug abuse, overeating, drinking, smoking, etc.  If we really wanted to improve the health of American citizens, perhaps we should spend the extra money (the trillions of dollars of money we don’t have) on programs designed to improve moral fitness.

Anyway, that’s all I have for now, just off the top of my head.  I suspect I have just scratched the surface.

Your loving but fearful uncle,

Fletcher

Interesting item from Byron York at the Washington Examiner.  It seems that even left-wing kooks like Al Franken, Richard Durbin and Charles Schumer understand that the 2.3% tax on medical devices, scheduled to take effect on January 1, is a “job-killing” tax.

If that’s true, then aren’t all the other tax increases being enacted by the Dems also “job-killing” taxes?

We’ve always known that ObamaCare is a fiscal scam that will cost much, much more than they admit.  We know it will cost jobs.  Furthermore, it’s part of a burgeoning debt problem that will possibly devastate our children’s financial futures (if not worse).

I’m not sure which is worse, stealing from poor people by destroying their jobs, or stealing from our children by loading them up with ruinous debt.

By the way, the level of detail presented above is really inside baseball.  We understand it, but it is completely lost on the low-information voter.  When we talk to the low-information voter, we need to keep it simple.  Like this:

One political party is trying to get and keep political power by convincing us that there is this large group of people who are entitled — entitled, mind you — to a long list of free stuff.  Every election cycle, that group has to get larger and the list of free stuff has to get longer.  It’s all going to be paid for by this ever-smaller, ever more despised — despised, mind you —  group of producers.  How long do you think that will work?

Repeat that explanation every chance you get.

This is a critical point, because the Dems appeal to our natural compassion by pointing out needs … and our neighbors have many, many heart-breaking needs that cry out for intervention.  Some of their problems are self-inflicted; some are beyond their control.  But bloated Government is not about meeting needs; it’s about getting and keeping political power.  The more of your money they get, the more powerful they are.  They get your money by growing the dependency class.  In the long run, it simply won’t work.

Just Say NO to ObamaCare Rally, Wednesday, Dec 5, 12:00 Noon, Tennessee State Captiol

Your help is needed to stop an ObamaCare State Exchange in TN.  From the Nashville Tea Party:

Governor Haslam must make a decision by December 14, and reports indicate he is still undecided.  Please Join Nashville Tea Party and many other groups to raise our voices together and petition the Governor to Just Say NO to an ObamaCare State Exchange.  We will have a petition for you to sign at the Rally.  Please join us.  Here is a map link.  We will rally on the east side of the Tennessee State Capitol Building at 12:oo Noon on Wednesday, December 5.

When ObamaCare becomes the debacle that we believe is inevitable, we cannot allow ourselves to be in the position of taking the blame.  If Republicans become the face of ObamaCare in Tennessee, we will be blamed.  We cannot allow that to happen.  Please do the following:

1. Call Governor Haslam’s office: (615) 741-2001
2. Contact Governor Haslam through his website: http://www.tn.gov/help/.  Under “Choose a Topic”, select “MESSAGE TO GOV. HASLAM,” then type your message.
3. E-mail Governor Haslam at bill.haslam@tn.gov.
4. Attend this rally on December 5.

More from the Cato Institute:

1. ObamaCare is Still Vulnerable
2. ObamaCare: The Road to Repeal Starts in the States
3. No ObamaCare Exchanges

Fascinating interview with Camille Paglia, Professor of Arts and Media Studies at the University of Arts in Philadelphia.  (Link also here; you may have to register and login, but it’s worth the trouble.)

A true maverick with something to offend everyone, Paglia has been described as “a writer in a category of her own … a feminist who hates affirmative action; an atheist who respects religion” and “a Democrat who thinks her party doesn’t get it.”

Camille Paglia on education (particularly art education):

[Because of sneering liberalism], students are emerging from our schools mal-educated.

On the loss of art education programs in schools:

American school children losing their art programs are paying the price for the art world’s delusional sense of entitlement.

Camille Paglia on ObamaCare:

Of course we need health care reform in this country.  What a mess!  Everyone agrees about that.  But ObamaCare is, to me, a Stalinist intrusion into American culture. …

I don’t understand how any veteran of the 1960s who’s a Democrat could not see the dangers here, that Obama is a statist.  It’s exactly what Bob Dylan was warning about in Subterranean Homesick Blues.

You don’t want government agencies being empowered to intrude into people’s lives like this.  The controlling force in ObamaCare is the IRS!  This flies in the face of what the Free Speech Movement was about at Berkeley or about any of the values of my generation.

On the Democratic Party:

I don’t see progressives.  All I see is white upper-middle-class liberals who speak in this unctuous way about the needs of the poor.  They have no connection whatever with the working class.  It’s the professional class gone amok.  And that’s why they don’t notice what a bureaucratic nightmare ObamaCare is.

Entire interview: http://www.pjtv.com/s/GEYDSNZS

… What are they saying?

Great new video out today!

www.WomenSpeakForThemselves.com

I recently got a check from the Golden Rule Insurance Company.  It was a “refund” mandated by the ObamaCare law, the purpose of which is to drive private health insurance companies out of business so that eventually we will be forced to buy from the Government monopoly.

I sent it back.

I had purchased the policy for only a few months, way back in 2011, when my wife was laid off from her job.

Here’s my letter:

Mr. Patrick F. Carr, President
Golden Rule Insurance Company
712 Eleventh Street
Lawrenceville, IL 62439

Dear Mr. Carr,

I received your check in the amount of $103.14, apparently extorted from you on my behalf by the US Government. I refuse to accept it; I am returning the check.

I contracted with you to provide insurance coverage. I went to the market place and selected the policy offered by Golden Rule because it offered the best combination of coverage and price, in accordance with my needs. I kept my end of the bargain, and you kept yours, and that’s all there is to it.

This so-called “refund” is nothing short of organized theft, conducted on a massive scale by a lawless band of thieves known as Obamacrats. The very idea that I would share in their malfeasance by accepting stolen money is repugnant to me.

I am  happy that you were able to cover your costs and hopefully make a profit.  As long as you keep your promises, I hope you make a huge profit.  Please be assured that I have done (and will continue to do) everything I can to protect all of us from this ongoing attack on our freedoms. I hope you can say the same.

Sincerely,
C. Fletcher Armstrong, PhD

P.S.: If you happen to see any Obamacrats in the course of your day, please tell them for me that I’d thank them to keep their damn noses out of my business and their grubby hands off my health care.

Update, October 18, 2012

They sent the check back to me and said if I didn’t cash it, they would have to put it in some kind of government-run unclaimed property system.  So, I accepted the cash and gave every penny of it to the Save America Before It’s Too Late fund, also known as the Mitt Romney for President campaign.

Milton Friedman is one of the great thinkers of our time.

In 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville (perhaps channeling his inner George Will) wondered what despotism in a republic such as ours might look like:

I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. …

Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood … it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs….

The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way … it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Welcome to 2011.  How did he know?  He wrote this in his famous work, Of Democracy in America.  Why is this not required reading for every American school child?  Anwer:  Because educated, thinking, freedom-loving citizens are antithetical to the Number One goal of the political class, which is to consolidate political power, that’s why.

Last week, George Will (perhaps channeling his inner Tocqueville) wrote an excellent column, Choking on ObamaCare:

Time was, American businesses could surmount such regulatory officiousness. But government’s metabolic urge to boss people around has grown exponentially and today CKE’s California restaurants are governed by 57 categories of regulations.  (Click here for entire column.)

How did Tocqueville know?

BTW, we picked up the Tocqueville quote from Mark Steyn’s excellent new book, After America.

Let me get this straight …

• We’re going to be “given” a health care plan
• that we are forced to purchase,
• and are fined if we don’t,
• which purportedly covers at least ten million more people,
• without adding a single new doctor,
• but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents,
• was written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it,
• passed by a Congress that didn’t read it,
• but exempted themselves from it,
• signed by a President who smokes,
• with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes,
• for which we’ll be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect,
• by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare,
• and financed by a country that’s broke!!!!!

What the hell could possibly go wrong?

Newswire says Anthony Weiner is resigning.  Not sure why he would do that, really.  After all:

1. Sure, he lied about sex, but so did Bill Clinton, and the Dems thought that was just fine.
2. Clinton lied to a grand jury, which is a crime.  Weiner only lied to us, which is not.
3. Weiner’s colleagues have made lying to us an art form.  They lie about ObamaCare, Iraq, Social Security, deficit spending, the economy, the financial health of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, tea party rallies, Valerie Plame, abortion, …  That’s just off the top of my head.

So what’s the big deal about Weiner’s lying?

Pro-lifers lawfully demonstrating on public sidewalks and in the air.

I attended the parent’s meeting at Sacred Heart last Thursday.  A lot of good information was presented.  The best speaker was Alaynna McCormick, the Hardin Valley Academy student who sparked the controversy by telling her mother what Planned Parenthood was teaching at her school.

So far, the school officials are mum.  If they are getting the message, they aren’t letting on.  They don’t seem to understand that their one-page curriculum is almost irrelevant.  What matters is who is teaching and what they are saying.  And in the age of the internet, what websites are associated with the speaker.  It’s not just about what is said in class; inviting PP and the abortion industry into any school is an endorsement.  I don’t care what the anti-smoking curriculum says, I still wouldn’t get Phillip Morris to present it.

Despite the good work done by all who presented, there are two key points that are not coming through, as yet.  The parents are going to have to make policy makers and citizens alike more aware of two key points.

First, the PP websites contain much more debauchery than was exposed by any of the speakers on Thursday night.  It’s just like trying to explain abortion.  If you sanitize it, people don’t get it.  To effectively rid the schools of PP, they need to be exposed.  And they have published plenty of stuff that would make a sailor turn red.  We just need to buck up and read this filth into the public record, no matter how dirty it makes us feel.  Speakers need to blow up and hold up the pictures that are on PP websites and in their books.  Otherwise, we look like a bunch of prudes.  And it’s not just the description of the acts; it’s the encouragement of our teens to “experiment” and do whatever they feel like doing at the time.

Second, we need to expose the profit angle.  In a previous post, FAB documented the amount of money that PP stands to make off marketing sex to our children.  It is an outrageous conflict of interest, and it needs to be exposed.