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Gaining Ground With "Common Ground" Initiatives

Thu, 2009-07-16 14:12 — figleaf

Amie Newman of RHRealityCheck.org is the latest to bring up one of the latest dividends of the pro-choice “common ground” initiative that tries to find, well, common ground with people who are leery, squishy, or squicked by abortion.

From Feministing:

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) was removed from the Democrats For Life of America’s advisory board because he supports contraception.

Apparently, DFA was tired of Ryan consistently harping on this crazy idea that the way to prevent unintended pregnancy is by ensuring access to contraception:

“DFLA gave Congressman Ryan ample opportunities to prove he’s committed to protecting life, but he has turned his back on the community at every turn,” said Kristen Day, the Washington, D.C.-based pro-life organization’s executive director.

What does “ample opportunities to prove he’s committed to protecting life” mean to DFLA? It seems clear that “protecting life” is not about preventing unplanned pregnancy and abortion. According to Ryan, 

“We’re working in Congress with groups that agree with preventative options while [the DFLA] is getting left behind,” Ryan said. “I can’t figure out for the life of me how to stop pregnancies without contraception. Don’t be mad at me for wanting to solve the problem.”

...

I think [Ryan’s] removal [from the DFLA board] has the potential to shine a very real light on how extremist many of the anti-choice organizations are. In this case, we now have a legislator who says clearly that he is working in Congress with various groups that can agree that access to contraception is critical. This work will continue with Rep. Ryan while DFA and others insist on sacrificing what most Americans want and need in regards to their sexual and reproductive health, pledging allegiance to rhetoric instead.

Read her post, and untangle my quotes within quotes, here.

And just to keep the flying links confusing, here’s a comment I left on a similar post by Jill Filipovic on the same topic at Feministe.

This sort of thing is the biggest dividend of the “common ground” initiative: it drives a huge wedge between the majority of people who just wish there weren’t as many abortions from… the kind of people who want to use abortion to control (heterosexual?) sexual behavior.

And the thing is it’s not just a wedge issue: I don’t know about Rep. Ryan himself but plenty of people like him really are comfortable with increased support for contraception (which includes making it safer, more effective, easier to use, less expensive, more accessible, and more widely available.) And most are willing to let abortions (however uncomfortable it makes them) as long as they think progress is possible in reducing unwanted, unplanned pregnancies in the first place.

Is that sort of pragmatic “common ground” ideal? No. What would be ideal would be unreserved and unconditional support for women’s reproductive self-determination. But in terms of coalition building it’s far, far better to have them on our side than on the anti-choice side. And just making the “common ground” effort, as we see, works two ways. First, it makes us appear sympathetic to waverers. Second, it drags real hard-core anti-choicers like the DFLA, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the U.S. Congress of Bishops into sunlight… where even to erstwhile allies like Rep. Ryan or even, say, shell-shocked-by-conservatism’s Will Saletan, their creepiness is impossible to miss.

So yeah, no way we’ll ever get to common ground with the DFLA. But then we don’t have to. Creating opportunities for them to alienate their nominal supporters is enough. Because, seriously, do you think they’d have kicked Ryan out if someone else hadn’t reached out to him? No.

Three and a half years ago people were telling me no way. But the result that I was looking for back then is slowly percolating into existence.

Snappy Dressers and Seeking Context For $150,000 in Clothes

Thu, 2008-10-23 12:48 — figleaf


Photo by Flickr user ElvertBarnes. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Not to sound thick or anything but based on what I remember from friends who’ve worked in, say, movies, theater, and other forms of the performance industry I’ve got a couple of questions about Governor Palin’s new wardrobe.

First of all did she just grab a campaign credit card and beeline for the nearest Saks or whereever it was she went shopping? Did she buy all distinct new outfits or multiples and variations on a smaller number of outfits? Did she have a budget? Did she go by herself or go with a professional dresser? How many appearances has she been to and what’s the standard expectation for same or different attire for each venue? For each magazine cover-photo shoot? With days off for R&R September 4th to November 4th is maybe 50 days. Did Governor Palin buy 50 $3,000 outfits? A few whopping-expensive ballgowns for formal nomination- and election-eve events and a bunch of more nearly-reasonably priced clothes? Did the bulk of the expense wind up being a few really pricey pieces of, say, signature jewelry?

How many suitcases and/or trunks do you need to wrangle $150,000 worth of wardrobe and accessories? Given time and travel of an eight-week start-from-scratch campaign marathon vs. budget constraints what’s the cost vs. opportunity of wear-it-once vs. cleaning and delivery when travel often involves multiple multiple-time-zones trips a day? And who was doing the wrangling?

I was talking to a young friend who just got back from sort of vagabonding around former Commonwealth countries for a year and she mentioned meeting a woman who’s entire job entails traveling with some rock star or another and choosing the clothes he’s going to wear each day. If the McCain family alone budges $200,000 plus a year for servants what’s a couple more staff to keep someone the campaign selected in part for her appearance in clothes? Was the $150,000 for clothes and accessories alone or were other services provided? And how does the expense line up with other campaign-related expenses such as primary (and auxiliary hello, dresser eats and stays somewhere nearby) daily travel, rooms, jets, catering, security, briefing, blah, blah, blah.

Oh yeah, and how does that compare to the (fully-encumbered, fully-amortized) cost of keeping other public personalities like, say, Katie Courec, Regis Philbin, George W. Bush, or (you might be surprised) the Version “Can you hear me now” guy kitted out.

In other words, yeah, it’s scandalous whether the Governor decided to expense a $150,000 fashion spree for for the giggles, or if the campaign underwrote her general appearance as a capital and maintenance. But they’re scandals of different orders.

And finally, I’m asking not because I know but because I don’t. While I’m happy the brouhaha is helping to further gut a thoroughly noisome campaign for a morally and philosophically bankrupt platform I care about the cost mainly because the price tag itself seems like a sensational (woo, what a golddigger) and misleading (what’s the infrastructure cost in terms of staff, transportation, consultants) celebrity sideshow.

Update: Someone at the The New York Times has evidently looked into the dresser angle as well. Based on that story the narratives would be yeah, there’s at least one dresser involved. Or else expense-report padding. Which would also fit an emerging narrative about the Palin’s casual attitude towards per-diems and expense reimbursement but my guess is still on the campaign consultant/dresser hypothesis. (Via Yglesias.)

Update: Heh. And BarbinMD of Daily Kos says

When you look at it in that light, it makes perfect sense. Palin was dealing with the vast differences in temperature seen across the 50 states swing states in late summer. From the mid 80’s in Florida, to the low 80’s in North Carolina, from the high 70’s in Ohio, to the mid 70’s in Missouri, a different wardrobe was needed to deal with the extreme temperature changes from state to state.  

And when you think about it, this $150,000 was a small price to pay to get the Republican Party to finally talk about climate change.

Read the quote in context here.

Sausage making at it's worst

Fri, 2007-11-02 22:35 — figleaf

According to DailyKos’s dkosopedia.com, Germany’s Otto Von Bismark said “Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made.” In America it’s more commonly attributed to one of the more famously, um, pragmatic 20th Century appropriations committee chairs.

I understand what they mean. Even with the most rigid party discipline and the most sizable majorities, crafting legislation is an extraordinarily complex coalition-building dance. Where, since the sausage-making metaphor is appallingly apt, the dancers are running around with gruesomely cut-up parts of animals most people wouldn’t cook for company.

And so I’ve understood the logic in the past for the House of Representatives allocating money for abstinence-only education as a way to prevent unrest from vulnerable rural Democrats, as a way to build bridges and/or keep Republicans from gumming up the works in the face of too-slim majorities, as a way to build veto-proof majorities in the face of a President who pretty clearly got Ds in college only because his professors didn’t want him to repeat their courses. And I’ve understood the not-that-well-understood rationale that once crap like that gets to the Senate, or to the House/Senate reconciliation committees, a lot of it gets ironed out anyway. And I understand this rationale, and I understand that rationale but past a certain point stuff like this…

Dems Finalize Massive Increase for Ab-Only
by James Wagoner

Today, the Democratic controlled Labor HHS Appropriations conference committee report includes the full increase requested by President Bush for abstinence-only programs. Let’s call that what it is: a stunning disgrace.

Source: RH Reality Check

... gets to be a little much. $141,000,000 isn’t just a heck of a lot of money. It’s more than the Republicans allocated even when their corrupt, scummy syndicate was at it’s most powerful!

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon correctly points out one problem with

As James Wagoner notes, abstinence-only is no boondoggle lark, but a very serious threat to public health. Discouraging kids from using condoms—ever—not only puts teenage girls at risk of getting pregnant, but it’s bound to cost lives. A big way that abstinence-only educators try to convince kids to ride bareback is to tell them that HIV seeps through condoms. Read: So when you fuck, don’t bother using them. Which means that there are going to be a lot of kids regularly taking the risk of exposure to HIV. And it’s not like the anti-protection lesson stays with you only through high school; the “don’t wrap up” message plagues many people throughout adulthood and hurts their contraception use.

She said it here.

At least when this bill was originally getting markups and this story first broke we heard that this funding was a bone thrown after appropriations for real sex education were doubled and quadrupled. Whatever happened to that story? It would make a little difference if it turned out to still be true.)

But even then the impact on public health represents only the practical, humanitarian side of the problem. Yes I’m aware that sounds ironic. Sadly it’s not because nearly every penny of that $141,000,000 amounts to foundation grants (a.k.a. non-profit corporate welfare) for thousands of individuals in dozens of organizations that by their very nature reject everything even the conservative-to-moderate Democrats like committee chairman David Obey who off-handedly passed this appropriation stand for.

In other words forking over money for the ugly Republican thugs who man (and I do mean man) these organizations the Democrats aren’t just insulting their base, aren’t just abandoning social justice, aren’t just endangering future generations, they’re arming the enemy with jobs, computers, offices, conferences, mailing lists, resumes, and, worse, a captive audience from which to recruit the next generation of David Viters’s and Richard Curtis’s who they will then support both overtly and covertly to run against decent, progressive Democrats.

In other words it’s not just America’s children that would be better of if this funding item were struck from the bill, and not only would America be better off, but the Democratic majority would be better off!

So WTF, dudes? Make sausage if you must but why fatten the bad guys with it?

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