Tag Archives: Komen

Rove Tried to Contain Planned Parenthood/Komen Damage

From “Karen Handel book:  Karl Rove urged retreat on Planned Parenthood,” Kathryn Smith and David Nather, Politico:

A tell-all book by a former official at Susan G. Komen for the Cure alleges that Karl Rove told the charity to reverse its decision to end its cancer screening funding of Planned Parenthood — raising eyebrows among conservatives who wanted Komen to stand firm amid the uproar.

The book by Karen Handel, the former Komen vice president who resigned after the charity restored funding to Planned Parenthood, says Komen CEO Nancy Brinker told her that Rove said the organization should back down.

The book, “Planned Bullyhood,” went on sale Tuesday, and the Rove story is already provoking comments from conservatives who have been skeptical of Rove in the past.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81036.html#ixzz26BjDBbM5

Rove wisely wanted the GOP to focus on the economy in the 2012 presidential election and not get bogged down in social issues, driving women away, especially white suburban women who helped elect Bush 43 twice.

 

Fallout from Komen’s Battle with Planned Parenthood Continues

Now the focus is on Komen’s founder and current head, Nancy Brinker.*    While she had a full-time job with the federal government between 2007 and 2009, as the State Department’s Chief of Protocol (appointed by Bush 43), she billed Komen $133,507.   Rick Cohen, an analyst of nonprofit management, says this is highly unusual.

Brinker, who is independently wealthy, also flies first-class and stays in five-star hotels at the charity’s expense.  Again, Cohen says this is unusual:  “For most nonprofits, they wouldn’t think of first-class travel.  There is the issue of perception.”  If she’s used to this lifestyle, she could bill Komen for coach and standard hotels and pay the difference herself.

There is also Brinker’s  mean-spirited attitude in taking legal action against other charities who use the phrase “for the cure.”  She has gone after a lung-cancer group that does Kites for the Cure and a group called Mush for the Cure, which does dog sled events.  These are much smaller charities than Komen, so Komen looks like a bully.  This doesn’t seem like a good use of donors’ money.

* “Komen Founder Nancy Brinker’s Mysterious Expense Report,” by Abigail Pesta, The Daily Beast

Addicted to Social Issues

We kept being assured that this election would be about the economy, not social issues.  But social issues won’t go away.

The Susan G. Komen fight against Planned Parenthood got the GOP presidential candidates involved, siding with Komen’s initial decision to cut off Planned Parenthood and decrying Komen’s reversal.

The Catholic Church’s reaction to contraception coverage under Obamacare also got the GOP candidates siding with the Church as if this were a Catholic country.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision against California’s Proposition 8 opposing gay marriage will keep this issue going for the rest of the election cycle, as the GOP candidates scramble to out-gay bash each other.

Griswold v. Connecticut, which upheld married couples’ right to contraception, has been the law since 1965.  Roe v. Wade, which provided limited abortion rights, has been the law since 1973.

But Rick Santorum wants to undo almost 50 years of settled law to let states have the right to ban birth control.

More and more, the fight over abortion has become a fight over the right to contraception, a fight to force Catholic doctrine that even Catholics don’t follow, onto the entire country.  We see this in the far-right “Personhood” amendments that would ban many forms of birth control, amendments so extreme that one was defeated in Mississippi last year.  Mississippi, that liberal hot bed.

Nothing less than the hard-won rights of women are at stake here, rights too many young women take for granted because they don’t remember what things were like before.  We’re so busy fighting the Taliban abroad that we’re ignoring our own version here at home.

I see a table of Catholic bishops lashing out at President Obama, and it looks to me like a group of Ayatollahs.  Why didn’t these bishops make such a fuss about priests who were molesting children?  They are emperors with no clothes, bereft of moral authority.

We are repelled by Muslim women being forced to wear burkas.  But insidious forces in this country are trying to wrap American women in invisible burkas that are just as demeaning and confining.

Meanwhile, while we fight about this stuff that should have been resolved decades ago, too many Americans are sending out too many resumes and never getting an interview, too many homes are still being foreclosed on, too many parents are struggling to feed their kids and keep them warm this winter.

Meanwhile, the centrifuges continue to spin in Iran, and Ahmadinejad is laughing at us.

Newt Blasts Komen Reversal

Already doing so well with women voters, Newt decided to help himself a little more by calling the Komen reversal on its grant to Planned Parenthood “unfortunate.”

“So when you lure people in for women’s health needs, and by the way, right down the hall you have an abortion clinic, I think that’s inappropriate….”  Emphasis added.

Well, Newt certainly knows something about luring women in, and he is “inappropriate” personified.

What would a Gingrich administration do for Planned Parenthood?  “As president, I would eliminate all Planned Parenthood funding and transfer it to an adoption service….”  Because that would certainly help low-income women get cancer screenings.

 

Kontradiction in Komen Statement

In its statement restoring funding to Planned Parenthood, Komen for the Cure takes offense at being accused of acting for political reasons:

“We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood.  They were not.”

Then two sentences later:

“We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.”

So they are admitting they dropped Planned Parenthood because of the purely political witch hunt investigation instigated by right-wing nut job Cliff Stearns in the House.