Michael Cohen will testify at a public hearing today. Be thinking about your family Michael, and your country. Truth is stronger than anger. Godspeed.
I have farm work this morning but will continue this post on other current topics over the next couple of days.
The 9/11 terror attacks, a previously unknown very infectious disease, these are national emergencies. Issues which have been addressed through legislation and/or funding by congress, for better or worse, are probably not national emergencies. Gun violence, and global warming, as important and urgent as these issues may be, are not national emergencies. Our democracy has, for better or worse, tried to address them. We have more work to do. Immigration pressure on our southern boarder is not a national emergency. Our Boarder Patrol and Customs people are doing the same good work they usually do. We have more work to do. This is not a national emergency.
We are also facing a situation on the American continents which is more like the refugee issues in the Middle East. People trying to walk here, thousands of miles from South America, to ask for asylum is something we have not seem much before. We need to address the overall problem as best we can, to improve economic conditions in the countries of origin, to engage these groups of people traveling through Mexico and through prompt adjudication for people who arrive at our boarder. For people who cross illegally or who have no reasonable case for asylum, the most humane treatment is a prompt hearing of their case and return to their home country or Mexico, within 24-48 hours.
No movement in North Korea toward eliminating nuclear weapons, and we knew that. So what was the point of the Trump-Kim meeting in Vietnam, and why Vietnam? To some views, the meeting was rushed without sufficient diplomatic groundwork. The effort is worthwhile but there are good meeting places in Korea or Japan. We don’t need to make such a big deal out of it. The farmer in me is looking for a workman like approach.
Now 4:30AM and I need to be at work in a few hours. Will continue this post on other current topics over the next couple days.
Title 10 of the Public Health Service Act authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to award grants for projects to provide family planning services to any person desiring such services, with priority given to individuals from low–income families. Such services typically include family planning education, contraception and screening for reproductive cancers and sexually transmitted diseases. The Hyde amendment prohibits any of this money from being used to fund abortion. This week the Trump administration announced they would change Title 10 and deny funding to any clinic or health care provider that also provides (non public funded) abortions. Further any clinic or healthcare provider which receives Title 10 funding in future is prohibited from discussing or referring any patient for abortion (the gag rule).
In my view the gag rule is a First Amendment issue and a privacy issue. The government cannot restrict free speech, and certainly not between a doctor and patient. The practical effect of the change to Title 10 is restriction of reproductive health care currently provided to hundreds of thousands of primarily low income women through Planned Parenthood clinics and similar providers.
This restriction is extremely unwise from a public health perspective and a further example of the inhumane, uncaring and cruel policies, even personal vendetta, of the Trump administration. Family separations, political bargaining with human lives, senseless deportations, please see my previous posts on these issues. And personal vendetta, the FBI agent fired the day before he qualified for retirement, the 19 year old girl who foolishly joined ISIS who now wants to come home, and the young man who also fell for the ISIS propaganda but became a valued informant for the United States but now is denied the witness protection program. WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS!
