Excellent reminder by Sara Mead, guesting at the Washington Monthly, on what the statistics say about our national priorities:
… One of the distasteful things about the tendency to label all sorts of debates or initiatives as “wars” is that in real wars, people die. But the reality is that a shockingly high number of American moms are dying for preventable reasons. The U.S. Maternal Mortality Ratio (the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) is shockingly high, well above the average for the developed world, and higher than virtually all of Western Europe as well as some countries in Asia and the Middle East. Even more troubling, U.S. maternal mortality has increased in the last two decades, and is now more than twice as high as it was in the late 1980s. The Affordable Care Act included provisions designed to help stop this scary trend—not just by expanding health care access (many maternal deaths could be prevented with proper care)—but also through the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, created as part of ACA, which provides nurses and social workers to work with high-risk moms, starting before they give birth, to help them have healthy pregnancies and deliveries and support their babies’ health and development after birth.The program is modeled after programs, such as the Nurse Family Partnership that have a strong track record of improving maternal and child outcomes, preventing abuse and neglect, increasing fathers’ involvement in their kids’ lives, improving kids’ school performance, reducing crime, and saving the taxpayers a boatload of money over the long term. But all that could go the way of the dodo, if ACA is struck down or repealed (and some of the right wing fear-mongering about this program must be seen to be believed).
__
For all we hear about “family friendly” conservatives promoting traditional families to keep us from going the way of G-d-forsaken Europe, the reality is that the U.S. actually has a higher percentage of infants and toddlers in childcare (as opposed to home with mom) than all the OECD countries except Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden (and we’re closer to Sweden than we are to the OECD average). That’s the direct result of policy choices we’ve made, including the total absence of paid parental leave (for which we stand alone among developed countries, in a small and shrinking field that includes Papau New Guinea, Swaziland, and Lesotho). And even as the recession has increased the number of moms of very young children in the workforce, states have cut funding for child care and made it harder to get in other ways as well…
For better or worse, ours is a capitalist society, and in a capitalist society anything “priceless” is by definition worthless. If the politicians and other grifters snuffling about “mommies driving the economy” and “our precious, precious children” actually cared about the real women & children outside their own gated communities, they’d talk less about giving the so-called job creators further breaks and more about supporting the next generation and the people doing the hard work of raising them.
S. cerevisiae
USA! USA! USA!
Where you have the freedom to die young.
Mark S.
I’m sure there’s a free market solution to this.
Derelict
Actually, if these people gave a rat’s ass about the fortunes of the fortunate, they’d be pushing universal healthcare and free childcare and a bunch of other social safety-net programs. Those programs give labor mobility and wealth, which labor then turns around and spends on all the things the wealthy make and sell.
Even Henry Freaking Ford understood this. Why is the concept now so unthinkable?
Mark S.
Yeah, the link is really worth clicking.
Tonal Crow
But if Republicans actually “promote[d] the general Welfare” (Preamble to Constitution) by providing the foundation for “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” (Declaration), then more people would be happy and satisfied with life.
People who are happy and satisfied with life are harder to scare than people who’re anxious and one paycheck away from homelessness.
People who’re harder to scare are less likely to vote Republican.
So why would Republicans want to do anything but promote anxiety, uncertainty, hatred, and division?
ETA: And what, pray tell, about modern Republicans gives any substantial reason to eschew this level of cynicism?
PaminBB
OK, I clicked the link and it boggles the mind that anyone listens to this jerk:
“…the former kung-fu action hero says that he was thumbing through the health care bill…”
Right, he was just browsing. Presumably, he finished perusing the phone book the night before.
CynDee
Great post, Anne.
General Stuck
I am not afraid of my government. I suppose that is because having worked in it for more than a few years, I have an idea how it functions. The right wing is the worst demonizing and fear mongering about men in black doing this or that evil thing to them, on a whim. And while there is certainly concern about too much power currently given policing agencies throughout the state and fed government, that is mostly a function of a right wing court for several decades, and too many citizens favoring tough policing, and that excesses won’t happen to them. But there are those on the left who feed this paranoia outsized to reality.
Our fed government is, and has been, and should be considered one of the good things about this country, and is actually very resistant to much tampering by politicos from any ideological stripe and ill intent. It is like the immovable object and irresistible force all at once. And has been built over the centuries to resist change and manipulation for broader pol purposes.
If you have worked for any federal agency, you would know that everything, and I mean everything, is under this or that regulation, that almost always chugs along as a force unto itself, toward whatever purpose it was created by congress, in the first place.
This mindset is reinforced by many layers of oversight, both internal and external to any one agency or department. It is a matrix set in near concrete, and only changes slowly, or by direct congressional mandate.
That does not mean what congress directs the government bureaucracy to do should be taken as something that should be done, but it does mean, it can within human imperfections, be expected to do what it is ordered to do by the congress and the president and the courts.
This bullshit about blown up fear from right or left that the government is a big boogyman out to get your ass, is simply, by and large bullshit. And most of the time, when folks in positions of responsibility go off the reservation, they get caught at it. It is very difficult to get away with misbehavior for very long, even at the top levels, without people finding out.
So, by all means, keep an eye out for shit like the Patriot ACT to remain temporary, and restrained, and other borderline shit, and agitate like hell to curb excess police powers the courts and congress have created, but fuckers like Chuck Norris, the right wing in general, and some on the left. Give it a rest, trying to make citizens terrified of their government through exaggerated accusations, without any or much evidence, to back up such claims.
We really do, with all our many other problems, have a solid federal government, that moves like a mindless robot doing what the regulations say it should do.
Svensker
This is where you’re not understanding them. They sincerely believe that if people were on their own, totally, with no “nanny state” safety net, then they would get off their butts and find work. But where are the jobs, you say? Well, if you didn’t hamstring companies with regulations and taxes, there would be plenty of jobs.
That’s what they believe. And it is a belief system that has to work, whether it actually does or not, because they BELIEVE it does.
Therefore, what you (and Obama’s ACA) are doing with all this nanny-state shit is making the problem worse, not better. And, therefore, you are really are the racist and the poor-hater. Not to mention evil.
End of argument. There’s no discussion possible.
currants
@Mark S.: Yes. Have to say, I also love the way the writer handled it at the end. “That well-known communist Kit Bonds, R-Missouri” or wherever the heck.
sophronia
Just wait until we start feeling the effects of conservative policies of restricted access to abortions and birth control. There are going to be an awful lot more children born poor and sickly to mothers who have no way to support them, or mothers who die from complications of giving birth. Don’t ask me how we are supposed to care for these kids with our starved state governments. And don’t ask the conservatives either, because they don’t care.
Another Halocene Human
Papua New Guinea (note spelling) is a developed country? Do tell.
Another Halocene Human
@Derelict: Yes, and according to some research published a few years ago comparing mortality and morbidity across class lines in Britain and the United States, even the elites in the US have a lower life expectancy.
GOOD GOING, ASSHOLES.
Jennifer
We shall never be free so long as anyone with an annual income below $150,000 gets anything they didn’t pay for.
This is what always got me about “centrist” DLC Democrats – it’s that you can’t co-opt the rightwing’s issues and expect to get any credit for it, because they’ll just keep on doing what they do – lying.
Clinton promoted and signed a welfare reform back in the 90s that pretty much ended lifelong public assistance; these days someone may land on the welfare rolls for a few consecutive years but that will be it. They will eventually be pushed off and into some low-paying job and given no further assistance – with child care or anything – and subsequently end up with less to support themselves and their families than they got on welfare. And even THAT isn’t good enough for the rightwingers – they continue to piss and moan as if “welfare” is the same as it was back in the 1970s & 80s.
What they really want is a Dickinsian society, one in which being a few dollars short means homelessness and destitution, and if at all possible, incarceration. I’d love it if we could have a Dickens revival, because his stories so vividly paint out the reality of the Republican Vision for America’s Future.
Another Halocene Human
@Mark S.: Child abusers and wife beaters are afraid of being exposed typically, yes.
And sometimes it’s not an out-and-out beating. Sometimes it’s fear, molestation, and brainwashing women into having pregnancies when they are physically incapable and giving birth in a manner that may kill. If that doesn’t work, some patriarchalists have a new scheme: forcing the wife and children to make bread from scratch… and by scratch I mean grinding the kernels. Anything to keep her so tired, exhausted, and mentally deranged that she can’t possibly fight back. (Check out NoLongerQuivering and related blogs for some hair-raising stories.)
Another Halocene Human
@Tonal Crow:
Ding ding ding.
Another Halocene Human
@Tonal Crow:
There are a few Republicans out there who aren’t completely hopeless cases, like high in the Northeast. But when you send them to Washington (out of the cradle of state politics) they have to caucus with the crazies… the racists, the gun nuts, the scumbags, the grifters, the demagogues. It’s no surprise their stronghold is in the sun belt (retired racists) and bible belt (richer than god property owners and their brainwashed cousins who think they’ll be rich real soon now… hence the frantic attempt at voter suppression in the SE since the collapse of the construction boom has cooled a lot of these fever dreams).
Ironically, the eastern mountain region is also crawling with racists but GOP inroads have been hit or miss.
General Stuck
@efgoldman:
If we reach the point of outright sedition of our governing institutions, from the wingnuts if they get power back this election, then that is a horse of a different color. And all bets are off, and we would be nominally in a state of insurrection and civil war, cold or hot.
But otherwise, my point is, that congress controls what the federal government does, or doesn’t do, and it is a pretty solid system following that course. And is resistant to political manipulation by a current pol party in charge, of not being found out. Though elections have consequences, and whoever wins can use the rules to get what they want, or don’t want. But Of course, being found out on lawlessness is a separate thing from being held to account.
But these fear mongering rants and raves, mostly by republicans, is mostly tin foil hat politicking. And not based in reality.
Tonal Crow
@Another Halocene Human: OT, but where does “Halocene” come from? I know “holocene” and “anthropocene”, but “halocene”?
gaz
@General Stuck: My wife currently works for the state. And you’re right. Congress does control it, for better or worse, and also, it is very resistant to change (often for the better, sometimes for the worse)
In any case – Reagan was great at selling the meme that “government is the problem”, and republicans going back to at least Nixon have been great at proving it, when people are stupid enough to elect them.
And the militia types have always loved this kind of thinking anyway – as it feeds their paranoid fantasies. It took Ronnie Raygun to sell it to the minivan set.
lacp
So the noted health-care expert Chuck Norris was multitasking, eh? One thumb in the health care bill, the other up his ass.
lacp
@Tonal Crow: The Age of Halogens. Duh.
Mark S.
Does the Justice Department have anything better to do than assign 5 prosecutors to the case of whether Roger Clemens lied about using steroids? Does anyone still give a fuck?
I’ve never cared much for Clemens, but I thought the government would let this thing die after fucking up the first trial.
Gex
I’ve started calling the anti-abortion crowd “pro-protolife” as it is far more accurate than how they label themselves.
@Derelict: What changed is the Civil Rights Act. GOP has won the white male vote every presidential election since. And those guys who crossed over won’t admit they are racist so they have to go ahead and hate on labor or the social safety net to make it look like they have an economic philosophy.
Gex
@Another Halocene Human: Some of the really sick ones like to point out how women who are beaten tend to give birth to children with lower weights. Just doing it for her own good…
Lolis
Hey y’all, Diane Sawyer sent out a request via Twitter for questions for Romney. She is interviewing both Romneys tomorrow. I said she should ask Romney his position on the Violence Against Women Act and why he thinks poor moms need the “dignity of work.” Ask a question using #AskRomney at the end.
Litlebritdifrnt
Our local Trial Court Administrator, a friend of mine, died at 28 from an embolism a week after giving birth to her second child. I was absolutely gobsmacked that such a thing could happen in a country that claims to have the best health care in the world. My mother is always amazed at how quickly people are discharged from the hospital over here. She was outraged that my husband had surgery to remove his gallbladder on basically an out patient basis, check in that morning, released a couple of hours after surgery. When she had hers removed she was in hospital for a week. Similarly, when she heard that my husband had pneumonia and was not only NOT in the hospital but had been sent home for the weekend with IVs for me to administer she was about apoplectic. Whenever something like that happens she always ends the conversation with “Oh sweetheart you really must consider moving back home, that horrible, wicked country is going to kill you.”
lacp
@Mark S.: Next thing you’ll be demanding they investigate the banksters instead, and then where will we be?
Litlebritdifrnt
BTW has anyone else but me noticed that the Repub talking points with reference to contraception have seen a subtle change in the past couple of weeks (Frank Lutz perhaps?), but now my RWNJ local radio host does not use the term “birth control” he uses the term “Abortifacient” almost consistently as if condoms and the pill are “Abortifacients” which obviously they are not. Has anyone else noticed this going on?
Jennifer
@Litlebritdifrnt: While I’m in broad agreement that the UK system is light years better than ours, on the specific examples, not so much. Gallbladder surgery ain’t what it used to be – they don’t cut you open to do it anymore. Like a lot of modern surgery, it’s done through a small incision with a scope. Small incision = less trauma to tissues = less need for hospitalization.
As for the pneumonia, if a patient can be cared for at home, these days he’s probably better off there than at the hospital where he may come into contact with MRSA or other hospital superbugs – all of which are more likely to be contracted by someone whose immunity is already compromised.
That’s not to say that there aren’t situations where they’re rushing people out the door a lot quicker than they should. I don’t know about the embolism, what caused it, and how it would have been discovered or mitigated with a longer hospital stay, so that may be one of those cases.
Mark S.
@lacp:
Or maybe we could try some of those Guantanamo guys.
General Stuck
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Just wait till WingNet takes over and goes on a tear. Colonel Snowbilly will ride down a nuke on the world.
General Stuck
@gaz:
Reagan’s first term was a case in point of what I’m talking about. If there was an over riding theme of his campaign in 1980, it was to shrink government like Grover wanted. I was working for a controversial regulatory federal agency at the time, and his henchmen came in and thought they were going to just shut everything down, and this mentality and effort was throughout the federal government. Especially anything to do with regulating industry.
He, Reagan, found out that even a landslide win for a campaign based on bringing government to heel was limited. Both the real courts and the court of public opinion actually brought Reagan to heel, lambasted by judges and a plummet in his public polling approval numbers.
And they adjusted back to some sanity and restraint. The people like to wring their hands and talk trash on their government, but they expect the bennies to arrive as and when promised.
General Stuck
@efgoldman:
There’s a saying. The federal government never forgets, and it is true to a large degree. Sometimes that is not a good thing in individual cases, but overall for long term stability of a country, it is vital, me thinks.
JPL
@efgoldman: You are missing an important point.. It was never about the
sexsteroids, it’s about the lying under oath.David Koch
@Lolis:
Why did he say only a three months ago that stay-at-home-moms lacked “dignity”?
Why does he hate moms?
Why does he hate America?
JPL
@David Koch: Hopefully Sawyer will ask him about Planned Parenthood and how he expects people in rural areas to receive health care.
Maybe she’ll also ask why he can get magic stick it up pills covered by his insurance, but birth control pills aren’t.
She’ll spend most of the time asking about the difficulties of raising a family of five.
David Koch
Only a someone who personally hates Jesus could attack motherhood, like Romney did.
Mark S.
@efgoldman:
You think? They both had surefire HOF careers before they started juicing. I could see them having to wait for a while, but I’d be surprised if they never got in.
JPL
@efgoldman: Yeah..I know.. I was just repeating the old Clinton line. It’s ridiculous.
Greyjoy
@Lolis:
Even better, ask him why he feels poor moms need the dignity of work but his own wife doesn’t.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Mark S.: Tell it to Pete Rose.
Lojasmo
@Litlebritdifrnt:
In Japan, where an angioplasty costs half of what it does here, people are kept in hospital for three days. We are now dismissing same day, in some cases, and next day in nearly all cases (except heart attacks).
Coronar artery bypass grafting is almost never done over there.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@General Stuck: After 25 years as a Fed employee (and 19 of which as a Federal employee Union rep) I think the safeguards in the FPM (Federal Personnel Manual) as bolstered by the TPM (Treasury Personnel Manual)are rawthah admirable, and pretty much like private sector Union contracts (when these were the norm, back in the day). What I feared most in those days was the utter stupidity and lack of understanding of these safe-guard rules by upper management appointees (along with in-agency nepotism). But the stupidity most often worked in our favor as we at least understood the rules, as many of their lawyers and other ass-kissers did not. Gawd bless arbitrators.
mainmati
@Tonal Crow: Agreed, the Party establishment, of which Romney is a signature symbol, is utterly cynical of its ow electorate. Every two or four years, they play the hate, bigotry, violence and cultural cards to bring the votes of those whose natural economic interests would never go towards the GOP. Many times it works especially since the Constitution biases the electoral college and the Senate towards low population, rural, conservative states. Eventually, this trend will lead either to a Constitutional reform movement or a break-up of the Union.