How to Talk to a Republican #8: Infant Mortality

Maybe they don't care because it's not their constituents dying. In an earlier post at my other site, I mentioned our high placement (not a good thing, GOPers) in maternal mortality. Turns out that trend extends to infants as well, where we place among the worst in the civilized world, ranking above only Latvia:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071111/ap_on_he_me/saving_the_smallest_us_picture

Most telling in the article is this small paragraph:

"Doctors and analysts blame broad disparities in access to health care among racial and income groups in the United States."

Why do those disparities exist? Market-based health care. Here's another telling quote:

"The same report noted the United States had more neonatologists and newborn intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom — but still had a higher rate of infant mortality than any of those nations."

Seems access is limited. Since the Market is determining who and who doesn't need pre- and neonatal care, I'm assuming that those who get the care are fairing well. Our socialized competitors, on the other hand, are out-doing us, apparently with fewer resources (translating, perhaps, into lower cost?). And not to beat a dead horse, where does this fall in the Right to Life argument? Does the baby's value end once the birthing process begins?

I guess, in comparing infant mortality in the United States against all other modernized countries, the Right can, with great pride, say, "thank God for Latvia."

Cross post from "Colorado Progressive".

Editor's Note: Link to story is busted, sorry, will do better next time, I promise....

How to Talk to a Republican #7: Patriotism

Riding home from grocery shopping today I got behind the stereotypical SUV with the red, white, and blue AND the yellow ribbons on it displaying their patriotism. So I'm thinking to myself, here I am in a European car sans ribbons getting 45 MPG following an American car full of Lee Greenwood patriotism getting maybe 12 MPG. Which of us is the more patriotic?

I never supported the war in Iraq. All the argumentation at the beginning had too many holes in it, there were too many dots that didn't connect, too many loose ends in the Administration's justification (bait taken hook, line, and sinker by some Democrats campaigning for President today, by the way). Being a blogger in a remote corner of America, I can also state I firmly believe the war was for oil, more specifically, for strengthening a strategic presence in the area to counterbalance Iran's growing influence. The evil Emperor Cheney foresaw the day when that strategic presence would be necessary to feed our hunger for energy and when we finally piss Venezuela off so much that they refuse to sell to us. He has also foreseen peak oil, the point at which half the world's reserves are gone, leaving oil more difficult and more costly to lift out of the ground leading to a death spiral of higher prices and lower supply, the end of the American energy-based economy.

It is, Conservative wisdom would say, then in the national interest to wield considerable influence in the area and, if your only source of wisdom is the Conservative, this is a true statement. One difference between the Conservative point of view and the Liberal is that Liberals tend to view problems from multiple points of view. I would like to believe that Progressives combine the best of both approaches, pragmatic decision making (the Right) combined with a wider, less conventional approach to problem solving (the Left). So how would this Progressive attack the problem?

We actually held more influence in the Middle East through soft power before the invasion of Iraq than afterward. The supply of oil flowing from the region is diminished through Iraq's lowered potential. So given the situation as it is today, I'd assume we will have to be in Iraq for some time to make up for the loss of our soft power in the region; however, if we ever hope to regain the soft power we once held, we cannot be there in combat roles. We can train the Iraqis, we can build infrastructure and we can defend ourselves but the mercenaries and the combat troops need to come home now (realistically, as soon as possible). We need to replace the hawks currently there, not with doves but with beavers, people who can do the jobs we need done without fighting.

At home, we need to implement conservation efforts. The one effective way of doing this has already been pioneered for us in Europe. Gas guzzling cars are allowed; however, you pay tax by the horsepower, not the vehicle's value as one example. I'd suggest progressive taxation on energy use in general and that it's levied per head. I have one person living in a house, my energy tax rate should climb faster than the same house with five people living in it. Domestic supplies of energy need to be exploited as well and I don't mean corn-based ethanol. We'd literally be better off to burn the corn in a power plant or to heat homes than to distill it into alcohol to run our cars, besides, we're burning food. These are suggestions without which resource competition, read wars, will become a way of life as there is less oil to exploit and it's more expensive to pump from the ground.

So who is the greater patriot, the driver of the Made-in-America SUV with the bumper stickers supporting the war and the troops or the German sedan without a sticker to be found? I vote for the sedan but of course, I bought it. Point is, without conservation, there will be much more blood spilled for oil in the future as an inevitable consequence of our current energy decisions and decreasing, more expensive oil.

Hat tip to Jenn in SLC for finding the misprint. You won't find it again....

What the Democrats Need to Concentrate On

In my real job, we refer to graphs like this as Pareto charts. Pareto is an Italian mathematician most famous for the Pareto principle, most commonly called the 80/20 rule. It states 80% of all effects come from 20% of causes.

The chart illustrates both the rule and what Democrats should be doing. The leftomost two bars, Iraq and the Economy, represent what 74% of what everyone thinks is most important. Add in the health care bar and you go over 100% because each bar represents two factors: Most important plus next-most important.

Terrorism and Immigration, the two pet projects of the Right, are to the far right of the chart. As a process engineer, I'd say leave them alone and concentrate on the leftmost issues. But neither of these are traditional Republican issues, in fact, they've avoided and fought against them for so long they can't comprehend that these are what real Americans care about.

Most of us are disgusted with the current crop of Democrats. I suspect if they were to spend the last year of the 110th Congress working on these three issues, calling vote after vote and forcing the Right to sustain veto after veto, November 2008 would be a blowout on a scale we've never seen, effectively eliminating the Republican party. Will they? I have my doubts. Instead of leading, Pelosi and Reid will continue to politick, to the detriment of the Party and the Republic.

Cross-posted from "Colorado Progressive"

How to Talk to a Republican #6: Sex Ed Redux

Interesting how many Conservative ideas have proven themselves just plain wrong when exposed to reality. Abstinence-only education, for example, has now proven itself to be about as effective as an aspirin between the knees at keeping unwanted pregnancies from happening. Here's a link to an article in The Guardian describing a study that proves if you want your baby girl pregnant, you vastly increase your chances of success by teaching her only to abstain:

"At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners'' among teenagers, the study concluded.

Important: No abstinence-only program had any effect on how often, when or with how many. The study did not mention the rate of pregnancy among abstinence-only teens as opposed to those who got a comprehensive sex education; however,

(comprehensive sex education programs) improved teens' knowledge about the risks and consequences of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and gave them greater "confidence in their ability to say 'no' to unwanted sex.''

Turns out the way to stop teen pregnancies - about 40 per 1000 teen girls - is comprehensive sex education. It does all the things abstinence-only programs purport to do, but measurably. Unlike a silver ring, a promise and technical virginity, comprehensive sex education works. If the Republican is really concerned about the welfare of teenage girls and not just in promoting another failed ideology, they'll have to admit that abstinence-only sex education does not survive contact with reality and, if the issue is the health and well-being of young people, comprehensive sex ed is the way to go.

How to Talk to a Republican #5 - Right to Life

My first question to any Republican who starts to talk about right to life is, at what point does the right end? After all, most support wars, any war where they can wave the flag, watch the footage on CNN with cold beer in hand and sing "Proud to be an American" (with their hands over their hearts) at the next football game. Wars kill people, so how does supporting war indicate a right to life?

And what about capital punishment? "Give 'em a fair trial before you hang the guilty bastards," right? After all, as Guantanamo and Jose Padilla prove, we're all about fair trials in this country but still, doesn't the accused have a right to life as well? Considering soldiers and death row inmates generally have to be death row inmates, I'll assume the right to life ends somewhere around eighteen.

But some states, generally those of a redder hue, are now passing laws that minors can be tried as an adult. This blurs the line a bit, back to when, fourteen? Sixteen? I'm assuming at some point, probably about the time a Baptist feels they need to be baptized, there is no more right to life in the Right's eyes because you can now give the newly minted teenager the death penalty for killing an abusive parent.

Let's take it back a little farther. Mother is now giving birth to the child and mother is poor. She, listening to the Right, is bearing the baby but what help can she expect. None, damned tramp went out and got herself knocked up. We'll veto health care for the child, we'll prevent, particularly if she is undocumented, the mother from getting prenatal health care, we'll take away welfare because we all know she should be out there working. No health care, no aid, what life have we given the child a right to? None, it can be argued. Bush vetoed SCHIP because it would interfere with insurance company profits: Nothing indicates belief like action - Republicans (Bush and those who failed to overturn the veto) value shareholder value over childrens' health.

So tracking it back, apparently right to life ends at conception, the very moment the Right insists life begins. There's no aid for the mother, no guaranteed health care for her, the unborn or the child. She's on her own. We insist she can't abort it, that would be wrong, but to sell goods to feed the poor, as Jesus injoined, even in the form of taxation and redistribution, we oppose.

Call it what you want, but it isn't right to life.

Ethanol, Rome and Roses

The push to get ethanol from corn reminds me of a story I once read. I'm a rose aficionado, so I read about them in various publications. There was a story of a time when Rome nearly starved. It seems rose attar (the scent), rose petals and roses themselves became so wildly popular that farmers around Rome stopped growing wheat, turning their entire agricultural production to producing rose products for Caesars and rich Romans.

We're burning food in our vehicles and watching food prices go through the roof. If imperfectly, history does repeat itself. As the Dutch tulip market becomes a metaphor for bubble economics, Rome's roses becomes one for giving up food for a luxury, in our case, E85 at $1.80 per gallon.

Cross-Posted from A Colorado Progressive....

How to Talk to a Republican #4: Free Speech

Thanks to Cliff Schecter for his kind words concerning the title of this series. Cliff wrote me back and told me he'd cribbed his title from Ann Coulter's book. There's no way she could prove plagiarism so I'm free to use the title.

Ahh, free speech. Lee Greenwood patriots everywhere hold the Flag as holy, perhaps just a bit more than the Cross. Burning it to them is an anathema, a desecration, an insult to all they hold holy. When "Proud to be an American" becomes the national anthem, perhaps flag burning will be illegal. I have a feeling a lot of other "offensive" acts will be outlawed then as well.

Freedom of speech means simply Government can pass no law abridging it. Free speech is also freedom of expression, and burning a flag is a form of expression. You may not like some speech, you may even find some offensive but Government can't abridge it as long as the First Amendment is in effect. You like the Second and the Fourth, you have to live with the First, now! Personally, there's something I find much more offensive, desecrating the Constitution.

Flag burning bans, free speech zones, banned books all offend me much more than a gasoline-soaked rag going up in flames. Attempts by the Government to intimidate reporters, to keep people out of events because of the message on their T-shirts, keeping passengers from flying because there's something Arabic on their chest, these disturb me. Again, it may not be speech you find to be of value but it is protected speech.

Another military veteran once told a protester who asked him how he felt about flag burning, For you to burn a flag would be extremely offensive to me and I would die for your right to do so.

ANY abridgement of free speech is a lessening of our Republic.

How to Talk to a Republican #3 - Sex Education

First, Cliff, if you're reading this, I didn't crib your title and I hope, since I haven't read your column, I'm not plagiarizing your material. For those of you who don't read Huffington Post regularly, Cliff Schecter wrote a post there of the same name. Any resemblance of the material I'm writing to Cliff's is purely coincidental, accidental and I hope, complementary.

Sex Education is a difficult topic for Republicans, particularly the Republicans you and I are likely to talk with. The ones at the top get adequate sex education, have access to contraception and, if the old aspirin between the knees trick fails, clean, safe abortions. Now abortion, or at least attempts at it, have been around since God invented unintended pregnancy. Contraception, too, was a long sought-after goal until the 1960's, when the Pill became the first-ever form of cheap, reliable birth control. That should have relegated abortion to a rare procedure, generally used to save a mother's life as it did in Europe.

It didn't here. See, Republicans, particularly religious right Republicans, have no interest whatsoever in stopping abortions. They're not particularly interested in a right to life, either, more on that later. What they're interested in is controlling sexual behavior, in short, limiting it to religiously and legally sanctioned unions - marriage. They really believe that teaching their daughters and sons (to a lesser degree) abstinence as the only form of contraception to be practiced by young, unmarried persons will somehow work. Never mind that it hasn't worked throughout human history and that God made sex a lot of fun to tempt the faithful, they think that by preaching an aspirin between a girl's knees works, it will.

So ban abortion, that'll work, right? If it were that simple. In a recently published study in The Lancet, abortion rates were found to be lowest in countries with legal abortions. Furthermore, the abortions performed there were safe, unlike the more frequent and more dangerous abortions performed in countries where abortion is legal. So, if you want to decrease the number of abortions, legalize it, right?

Not so simple. The US and Canada had 21 abortions per thousand pregnancies in 2003. In western Europe, where the procedure is also legal, the number was about half that. The Netherlands is the country with the lowest abortion rate at 4 per one thousand, about one-fifth of ours. Why?

1. They have universal, fact based sex education in schools.
2. They have a universal acceptance of the fact that sex is fun, a normal human activity and can be practiced simply for the enjoyment of it.
3. They have universal, free access to contraception.

Bet your preacher didn't tell you that one.

So bottom line, there are two ways to stop abortion. One is easy and ineffective - outlaw it. The other is more complex and effective - go the Dutch route. Liberal thinking may be convoluted at times but this engineer sees a direct correlation between the actions and the results. So if your goal is to reduce abortions, go Dutch.

We'll talk about "right to life" tomorrow.