Random Politics & Religion #00

I maintain that the ACA's problem is that it's a band aid on a gunshot wound.

Two things that should never be treated as a business are education and health care, and in this country they're treated as nothing else.

You are critical towards Obama, I will admit, but certainly not as much as you are towards Bush or Reagan. And you practically praise Clinton, even though the highlight of his presidency is humping an intern.

So, what's your point again?

You use 2 communist government to prove your argument. Do you want us to go through every single private industry that went bankrupt in the history?

That's twisting arguments.

It's a pre-infected Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. It looked like it was helping at first, but seems to just be making things worse over time.

Both education and health care are interesting in that the private industry in full control and the government in full control would both be major problems. But hey, people like their extremes. Discussing specific compromise solutions without delving into a biased "1 iz cleerly beter" is probably out of the realm of possibility, though.

I maintain that the ACA's problem is that it's a band aid on a gunshot wound.

Two things that should never be treated as a business are education and health care, and in this country they're treated as nothing else.

Anything else you would like to add?

Vacation

Always preferred Vegas Vacation.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to re-enter the national debate over abortion.

The justices will decide whether tough new restrictions placed on abortion clinics and doctors in Texas constitute an "undue burden" on women seeking legal abortions and should be struck down.

The restrictions — forcing doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and requiring clinics to meet standards for outpatient surgery centers — threaten to leave the state with only 10 clinics clustered in four population centers and along the Mexican border. A similar law in Mississippi threatens to close that state's lone abortion clinic.

Whatever the justices decide next year will help clarify the court's 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, when a deeply divided court upheld the right to abortion while letting states impose restrictions that do not block women from obtaining services. The case is expected to be heard in March and decided in June.

"This will be the most important abortion rights case before the Supreme Court in almost 25 years," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of several abortion clinics.

"It's overdue," said Steven Aden, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, which has submitted briefs on behalf of several states in the legal battle. “The Casey standard is unworkable and was ill-designed to begin with. We have more litigation now over the meaning of the Casey standard than we’ve ever had."

By clearing up the ambiguity left by the 1992 ruling, which said states can impose restrictions that do not constitute an "undue burden," the justices could serve notice to lower courts across the country and hand a victory to one side or the other in a debate that has raged since their Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973.

Emboldened by the court's most recent action on abortion — its 2007 ruling that upheld bans on "partial-birth," or late-term, abortions — state legislatures have enacted hundreds of restrictions in recent years. They range from 24-hour waiting periods and parental notification laws, mostly upheld by lower courts, to bans on abortion after six or 12 weeks, which courts have blocked.

“The politics of this has always been to push the court more and more to give deference to state legislators to restrict abortion rights,” said Kathryn Kolbert, director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College, who argued the 1992 case before the court on behalf of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

At the same time, the number of abortions in the USA has dropped steadily, from more than 1.5 million in 1992 to slightly more than 1 million in 2011. That marked the lowest rate of abortions for women ages 15-44 since 1973.

The result of the laws and lawsuits is a growing disparity among states. California had 160 abortion clinics in 2011 and New York nearly 100, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The Texas law, passed in 2013, forced more than half the state's 46 clinics to close, and more are threatened by the latest appeals court decision. Wyoming has no abortion clinics. Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota each have one.

The Supreme Court has refused to re-enter the debate since 2007, turning away four efforts in the past two years by Arizona (twice), North Carolina and Wisconsin to appeal lower court rulings striking down abortion bans or restrictions on medication abortions, admitting privileges and mandatory ultrasound tests. The Texas case has created a split among lower courts on how the Casey standard applies to doctors' admitting privileges and clinics' operating standards.

"Like so many Supreme Court decisions, it's subject to interpretation," said Neal Devins, a William & Mary law school professor who has written on the subject. For years, state legislatures focused on restrictions such as requiring parental consent and waiting periods, he said, but more recently Republican legislatures have been "going well beyond the template of laws that Pennsylvania had enacted and Casey had approved.”

Coincidentally, the issue will play out during next year's presidential election, just as it did in 1992. Then, the focus on abortion rights and restrictions helped Bill Clinton against President George H.W. Bush, polls and studies suggest. The latest Gallup polls show 80% support for legal abortion in at least some circumstances, so a renewed focus could help Democrats next year.

The court itself also has changed. No women served there in 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor helped craft what came to be known as the "Casey compromise" in 1992. This time, three women — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — will join the debate.

Justice Samuel Alito's role also will be notable, because he served on the federal appeals court that upheld Pennsylvania's abortion restrictions before the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. He found no fault with any of the restrictions — even the one struck down by the appeals court majority that called for spousal notification.

But the case, like those before it, most likely will be decided by Justice Anthony Kennedy. He joined the plurality that concocted the undue burden standard in 1992 and is the only one in the majority then who remains on the bench. He was the deciding vote in allowing states to ban late-term abortions.

"I think it's up to Kennedy," said Priscilla Smith, a senior fellow at Yale Law School who lost that case in 2007 by a 5-4 vote. Noting almost a decade has passed since then, she said, "I don't think Kennedy ever wants to take an abortion case if he can avoid it."

John Eastman, a conservative law professor at Chapman University in California, said the controversy over Planned Parenthood's use of fetal tissue from abortions could help sway Kennedy again. The justices, he said, pay attention to current events "because they know their decisions have to find some support in the real world."

Edit: Just to see if anyone actually reads this wall of text, Rooks likes baby ducks!

The Texas law requires abortion clinics to employ doctors who have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers. The state said it is intended to "improve the health and safety of women" while leaving at least one clinic operating in every population center — though if it is upheld, the Rio Grande Valley would see reduced services, and El Paso residents would have to get abortions in New Mexico.

"There is no evidence that women will experience any materially different travel distances to obtain an abortion," the state contended in its brief opposing a Supreme Court decision to hear the case.

The law's challengers claimed the restrictions are meant to limit abortions rather than improve women's health and would force all but 10 clinics to close in a state where about 60,000 women seek abortions annually. "Women unable to make the trip to one of the remaining clinics are left with only two options: carry an unwanted pregnancy to term or attempt an illegal abortion," their reply brief said.

The challengers lost the first round in court, after which the number of clinics dropped from 40 to 18. If the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is allowed to stand, an additional eight clinics would close, including the only one in West Texas. The court would let the lone clinic in the Rio Grande Valley remain open but with greatly reduced services. Waiting lines would grow in Houston, Austin, San Antonio and the Dallas-Fort Worth region.

The Supreme Court had blocked the law from taking effect while appeals continued, most recently in June by a 5-4 vote in which the court's most conservative justices dissented. That makes the legal battle lines clear.

“Part of what each side is counting on is getting Justice Kennedy," said Michael Dorf, a professor at Cornell Law School who clerked for Kennedy in 1992, when Casey was decided. "Both sides think in a perfect world that the court would move much farther — in opposite directions."

Via Collin Eaton and Ryan Holeywell, FuelFix:

More than half of the rigs operating in Texas could cease operations in response to plummeting oil prices, a prominent oil industry economist said Friday.

Karr Ingham, who compiles the monthly Texas Petro Index, said the state could lose more than 600 rigs, just as it did during the 2008-2009 oil price collapse tied to that period’s global economic slump.

“I think people haven’t quite gotten a grip on what’s possible,” said Ingham, who compiles the index for the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, a trade group.

The number of rigs operating in Texas fell from 895 in December to 695 this week — a 22 percent drop. But Ingham said the rig count will fall even more dramatically as the industry continues to face low oil prices that show no signs of rebounding soon.

“We’ll likely lose 60 to 65 percent of the rigs,” Ingham said. “If I turn out to be dead wrong about this, it will suit me just find.”

He said the trend won’t reverse until oil prices start to creep back up. Despite layoffs and falling rigs, that’s unlikely to happen any time soon because U.S. oil production is still growing. “The thing that needs to happen soonest is the the things that’s going to happen last,” Ingham said.

Meanwhile, the impact on Texas jobs will be profound. He said 50,000 upstream workers in Texas could lose their jobs as a result of the oil price decline, based on what he saw during the 2008-2009 cycle.


“It will be a bloodbath in the short-term, but it’s cyclical,” Ingham said.

And more layoffs have hit the Texas oil field services industry.

Industrial conglomerate GE notified state regulators last week it will lay off 330 employees in the East Texas manufacturing operations it acquired from oil-field pump maker Lufkin Industries.

In a letter to the Texas Workforce Commission disclosed Monday, GE said it is cutting 45 percent of the manufacturing, sales, engineering and other jobs at its Buck Creek plant starting in late March. The layoffs are expected to be complete by April 30.

Lufkin Industries, named for the East Texas city, had 4,400 employees at the end of 2012, the latest available regulatory filings show. GE had bought the company in 2013 for $3.3 billion as it bolstered its oil and gas operations.

GE said the facility is a union plant and the layoffs are expected to be permanent, though some employees will have bumping rights.

Two other oil companies, rig contractor Lariat Services and oil explorer Sandridge Energy, told regulators they would lay off 26 and 25 employees, respectively, in West Texas’ PermianBasin. Multistage fracturing company Trican Well Service said it would cut 125 jobs in East Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott signs several higher education related bills into law on June 4, 2015. He also praised state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, left, for her work in the most recent legislative session on education issues.

Gov. Greg Abbott signs several higher education related bills into law on June 4, 2015. He also praised state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, left, for her work in the most recent legislative session on education issues.

Greg Abbott Letter to General Electric's Jeffrey Immelt
PDF (292.4 KB) download
* Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout.

Gov. Greg Abbott is wasting no time pitching Texas' business climate to companies elsewhere, dangling the state's new tax-relief package in front of Connecticut-based General Electric.

"I'm sure governors from across America are knocking down your door since you openly declared your displeasure with Connecticut's proposed $700 million increase in taxes on businesses over the next two years," Abbott wrote Wednesday to GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt. "But how many of my colleagues just passed a total relief tax package of $3.8 billion like we did last week in Texas?"

The letter marks Abbott's latest effort to pick up where his jobs-poaching predecessor left off. Like former Gov. Rick Perry, Abbott has said he wants to travel the country and world to attract companies to Texas, especially in the wake of a legislative session that made the state more business-friendly.

In addition to touting Texas' low-tax environment, Abbott plugged the state's economic incentives programs and its commitment to educating its workers. Abbott made pre-kindergarten a priority throughout the session and last week signed into law a so-called Governor's University Research Initiative that uses leftover money from a now-defunct incentives program to lure world-class scholars to Texas schools.

According to his office, Abbott has made similar appeals to two other companies based in Connecticut: insurance giants Aetna and Travelers.

GE has all but threatened to leave over a budget deal that would raise taxes on corporations and the state's wealthiest residents. In a statement last week, the international conglomerate said the plan makes businesses like it "seriously consider whether it makes any sense to continue to be located in this state."

A spokesman for Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, brushed off the appeal from the red-state governor.

"Connecticut has one of the lowest — one of the lowest — effective corporate tax rates in America," Devon Puglia said in a statement. "It's that simple."

Asked about Abbott's letter, a GE spokesman would only say the company is exploring its options for moving its corporate headquarters. "It is too soon to comment further on the process," Seth Martin added in a statement.

Texas is not the only state seeking to capitalize on GE's dissatisfaction with Connecticut. Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal indicated Tuesday his state will make a play for the company as well, and Florida is reportedly in the mix.

Edit: Just to see if anyone actually reads this wall of text, Rooks likes baby ducks!

Duck is a fine meal, I'm having it this Thanksgiving. Also, see you next summer, Supreme Court article.

Abbott Tries Wooing General Electric to Texas
by Patrick Svitek June 10, 2015

What's not to like about baby ducks?