Sen. Flake: Bloomberg ads wrong, 'I did vote' for background checks

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) is pushing back against attack ads that say he broke his promise to support passing new gun laws.

"If you are anywhere close to a television set in Arizona in the coming days, you’ll likely see an ad about gun control financed by NYC Mayor Bloomberg," Flake wrote Friday on his Facebook page. "Contrary to the ad, I did vote to strengthen background checks."

Flake is responding to ads from Mayors Against Illegal Guns, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's (I) group that supports tightening gun laws. Recent advertising by the group accuses Flake of breaking his promise to help pass expanded background checks.

Flake voted against an amendment co-sponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) that would have expanded background checks to include firearms purchases at gun shows and over the Internet. But Flake says he did not break his promise because he supported an alternate gun control proposal by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

"I voted for the bipartisan Grassley amendment, which included language from a bill I helped write which strengthened background checks for those with mental illness," Flake continued. "The Grassley amendment also included language to increase prosecution of criminals and fugitives who circumvent the current background check system.

"Mayor Bloomberg can spend millions trying to get me to support his view of background checks. That’s his call. But we Arizonans aren’t easily bullied. The legislation that would have done the most to keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them was the Grassley amendment. And that’s the amendment I supported."

Flake is one of a number of lawmakers Mayors Against Illegal Guns has targeted on guns. The group has also begun airing gun ads directed at Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.). On Thursday, Ayotte sent out a fundraising email to supporters with a statement similar to Flake's.

"Michael Bloomberg and his liberal allies think their $700,000 smear campaign will pressure me into changing my vote on the Manchin-Toomey gun control bill," Ayotte wrote in the email, according to CNN. "They couldn't be more wrong. As a mother, I am 100 percent dedicated to fighting gun violence. But I also have the experience to know that expanding an already broken background check system will not prevent a deranged individual or criminal from obtaining and misusing firearms."

In response, Mayors Against Illegal Guns stuck with its criticism.

"Sen. Flake is obfuscating his position by citing his vote for a decoy bill created by the Washington gun lobby (Grassley-Cruz) that would have actually weakened the background check system and made it easier for dangerous people to get guns," the group said in a statement.

—This story was updated at 4:52 p.m.

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Cal Thomas Column: Contraception Mandate Is Wrong Because Government Shouldn't Define What Is and Isn't a Church

Under pressure from religious and conservative groups, the Obama administration has offered another compromise on the issue of birth control coverage within the Affordable Care Act. While exempting churches and some religiously affiliated institutions, such as hospitals and universities, from supplying the coverage, the new proposal calls for their employees to receive stand-alone private insurance policies providing birth control coverage at no cost. Insurance companies will foot the bill, but only the naive can possibly think the cost won't find its way back to the institution in the form of higher health premiums.

Numerous lawsuits filed against this and other portions of "Obamacare" will proceed and for good reason: the federal government seems intent on setting rules on matters of conscience and worse, defining what constitutes a church, or religious institution.

One of the litigants is Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores, whose CEO, David Green, is an evangelical Christian. Green says, "We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate." That mandate includes, in addition to contraceptive coverage in employees' health care, "preventive services," including "morning-after" pills and other drugs, which Green considers abortifacients. After Hobby Lobby's appeal to Justice Sonia Sotomayor was rejected, the Christian Post reports the company then made plans to "...shift the beginning of its employee health plan to temporarily avoid $1.3 million a day in fines for each day since Jan. 1 that it did not comply with the Affordable Care Act." (According to the new health care law, businesses with more than 50 employees that refuse to comply can be fined by the IRS $100 per day per employee.) Hobby Lobby's appeals continue.

The core issue as I see it -- and there are others -- is whether the government has the right to define a church as a building in which people congregate on Sundays and whether a private company headed by a religious person qualifies for conscience exemptions. For government to decide such things violates the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment, which state "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." and appears to put the state in the position of supreme authority and arbiter of what constitutes "legitimate" religious faith and practice. The Supreme Court will likely have to resolve its constitutionality.

Permit me to offer the justices some assistance.

The early church was not a building with a towering steeple. The early church met in homes. If one accepts New Testament teaching (and what higher authority on the church could there be?), the concept of the church being an organism that resides in each individual believer is clearly spelled out in several passages.

Paul the Apostle writes in his letter to the Colossians (1:24) about the "body" of Jesus Christ, "which is the church." By this, he means the "body of believers" in whom Christ dwells. Wherever that body is, whether an individual, or a group of believers, that's the church. It was only later that this concept of church was turned into something with expensive buildings, tax exemptions and denominations.

The same theme can be found in Revelation where John is asked by Jesus to write letters to several churches. Those, too, were bodies of believers, not physical structures.

In the Old Testament, God told Solomon that while He was too big to live in buildings, He would "dwell" in the Temple Solomon built for Him. Ultimately, though, He said He had other intentions: "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people." (Jeremiah 31:33)

That was and remains for believers the authentic church, so when people say, "I am going to church," it is an impossibility because they can't go to themselves.

The administration's efforts to effectively gerrymander lines between what it considers legitimate religious practice and the secular is what the Founders hoped to avoid when they linked the establishment clause with the free exercise clause.

That is why, among other reasons, government should not mandate birth control coverage as part of any national health care plan.

(Readers may e-mail Cal Thomas at tmseditors@tribune.com.)

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Medicaid Expansion Wrong for SC

‘For every problem,” H.L. Mencken wrote, “there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong.” Enter Obamacare and one of the main ways that it purports to reduce the number of uninsured: putting more people on Medicaid.

S.C. legislators are being pressured to do just that. The House has rejected the idea, and Gov. Nikki Haley has vowed to veto it, but it’s not dead. And if they ultimately sign on to the idea, they’ll find they’ve made a costly mistake and created a long-term fiscal problem.

Specifically, some in the Legislature want to expand Medicaid eligibility to more adults during the three years the federal government covers the expansion population.

But this allegedly good deal will only bring turmoil to the state’s budget in the future. For one thing, Medicaid expansion is not “catch and release” for the states. Once such an expansion has occurred, it is politically difficult if not impossible to roll back enrollment. It becomes a permanent entitlement — and one that is completely unaffordable.

If South Carolina expands Medicaid, taxpayers would be on the hook for millions. According to our research, the expansion would begin costing the state just four years from now and would cost $612 million over the next 10 years — outstripping any purported “savings.”

Already Medicaid is consuming a greater share of the state budget. Expanding Medicaid will make it even larger and harder to pay for other state priorities, including schools and roads, in the future.

This also assumes that federal funding for the Medicaid expansion goes unchanged. Right now, Washington is struggling to get the country’s fiscal house in order. Any serious efforts to address this crisis would have to address real entitlement reform, including Medicaid.

Although administration officials say Medicaid is off the table, it was just last year that the president’s own budget proposed changing Medicaid financing. So these promises are good only until the president needs money to pay for his many other spending priorities.

But affordability isn’t the only issue. Extending coverage via Medicaid doesn’t mean that individuals will, in fact, gain access to the health care they need. Already, it is becoming harder to find a doctor who will accept a new Medicaid patient, primarily due to lower payment rates.

Obamacare tries to temporarily raise Medicaid payment rates for some doctors. But here too it leaves the state holding the bag and ignores the reality that you can’t add millions of people on to a program where there are fewer doctors to see them. Not only will new and existing patients have a harder time finding a doctor, but the doctors will have less time to spend with each patient. The expansion of Medicaid also will displace private insurance and shift more of the cost of health care to the few who still have private insurance.

Who suffers the most if this happens? The needy, of course, including children. Medicaid doesn’t pay for many procedures, and physicians are only able to manage because of their non-Medicaid patients. If more people are dumped into the program, that lack of compensation will only worsen, and the doctors will be forced to do more for even less.

A massive expansion of Medicaid will not meet the needs of those it is intended to reach and will only further exacerbate the challenges of delivering quality care to those currently on it. Medicaid needs reform, not expansion. These reforms can start now with states, like South Carolina, working to develop their own solution for addressing the needs of the uninsured. Ideas that don’t depend on approval or more financing from the federal government.

But as the Hippocratic Oath says, “First do no harm.” S.C. legislators can honor that dictum by not expanding their Medicaid program.

-Former Sen. DeMint is president-elect of the Heritage Foundation.

First appeared in The State.

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Why Medicaid Expansion Is Still Wrong for the States

Governor John Kasich now joins the list of governors that are looking to expand their Medicaid programs. In some instances, the logic of such a decision makes sense. Democratic governors have traditionally supported expanding the role of Medicaid. But the decision by Republican governors, such as Governor Jan Brewer (Ariz.), Governor Jack Dalrymple (N.D.), Governor Susana Martinez (N.M.), Governor Brian Sandoval (R., Nev.), and now Governor John Kasich (R., Ohio), is puzzling.

Like most government programs, Medicaid promises more than it delivers. While it consumes an ever increasing portion of state budgets — crowding out other state priorities, such as education and transportation — its track record for delivering quality health care to those in need falls short. Endorsing the expansion ignores these underlying problems and in some instances seems to make them worse.

Of these five Republican governors, four joined the lawsuit against the Obama administration regarding the coercive nature of the Medicaid expansion. It is troubling that now that the Medicaid expansion has been deemed voluntary not mandatory by the Supreme Court, these governors are perfectly happy to have the federal government coerce them into the expansion with the enticement of new federal dollars.

Second, many of these governors argue that the Medicaid expansion is actually good fiscal policy. These governors may be looking at a short-term bump in new federal dollars, but the longer view shows that over time this new revenue disappears and the cost of expansion continues to rise. A recent study in support of the expansion in Ohio supports this conclusion. There are also many underlying assumptions that raise further questions related to the true cost of the expansion.

One is the assumption that the federal funding will remain constant. However, here too the longer view indicates the opposite. As federal policymakers debate the course for fixing the country’s fiscal woes, it is inevitable that if these efforts are serious, entitlement programs such as Medicaid will need to be on the table. Although the administration is trying to distance itself from its previous recommendations on federal financing of Medicaid, it is impossible to guarantee that the federal dollars will remain untouched.

Some governors have made their willingness to expand the program contingent on the federal government’s keeping its funding promises. They that if the federal funding changes, the states will opt out of the expansion. Such an opt-out strategy seems difficult. It is the exception not the norm for a state to scale back its Medicaid program. As a matter of fact, while there may be periods of slowing enrollment, overall enrollment continues to climb. From a practical position, it also remains unclear the process by which a state would opt out and the role that the secretary of HHS would have in that process.

Some expansion supporters argue that choosing not to expand Medicaid would mean that a state opting out would just be leaving money on the table, and that this money will include money from the non-expanding state’s federal taxpayers. Rather than a race to the bottom to scoop up as much federal tax dollars as possible in support of a program with poor results, the better solution would be for the states to recommend that Congress eliminate the enhanced federal matching funds. That would remove the temptation of federal dollars to do bad policy.

By 2017, one in four Americans is expected to be on Medicaid. In states that are trying to jumpstart their economy, it seems governors should be working to reduce dependence on the welfare state, not add millions more to it. It should be focused on getting people back to work, not creating incentives that keep people out of work. And states should be focused on fixing the program for those who are on it today rather than dumping more people into an already broken government program.

There needs to be a better solution. Simply because a governor wants to expand Medicaid doesn’t mean the legislature has to agree. State officials should be advancing reforms at the state level that move Medicaid in the right direction, not the wrong one.

— Nina Owcharenko is Director of the Center for Health Policy Studies and the Preston A. Wells Jr. Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

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Making Sense of Climate Sensitivity: How The Economist And MSM Keep Getting It Wrong

Memo to media: “Climate sensitivity” is NOT the same as projected future warming!

Projected warming even with (an unlikely) low climate sensitivity of between 1.5°C and 2.0°C from Michael Schlesinger et al 2012.

The Economist has joined the ranks of the major media who continue to sow confusion on one of the key questions of our time: How much warming will we subject our children and the next 50 generations to?

I addressed this two months ago in the post “Memo To Media: Climate Sensitivity Is NOT The Same As Projected Future Warming, World Faces 10°F Rise.” And that was two months after I discussed it in debunking an error-riddled Matt Ridley piece in the Wall Street Journal. But as long as the MSM keeps getting it wrong, I’ll keep updating my correction.

The answer to the question of how much warming we face depends primarily on four factors:

The so-called “equilibrium climate sensitivity” – the sensitivity of the climate to fast feedbacks like sea ice and water vapor. The ECS is how much warming you get if we suddenly adopt a super-aggressive effort to cut carbon pollution and only double CO2 emissions to 560 ppm — and there are no major “slow” feedbacks.  We know the fast feedbacks, like water vapor, are strong by themselves (see Study: Water-vapor feedback is “strong and positive,” so we face “warming of several degrees Celsius” and Skeptical Science piece here).The actual CO2 concentration level we hit, which on our current emissions path is far, far beyond 550 ppm (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories are being realised” — 1000 ppm).The real-world slower (decade-scale) feedbacks, such as tundra melt (see “Carbon Feedback From Thawing Permafrost Will Likely Add 0.4°F – 1.5°F To Total Global Warming By 2100“).Where they live — since people who live in the mid-latitudes (like most Americans) are projected to warm considerably more than the global average.

The media, perhaps aided by some scientists who aren’t great at communications, tend to focus on just #1, a number the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report pegged as “likely to be in the range 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded, but agreement of models with observations is not as good for those values.” While the majority of studies tend to be in the middle of the range, a couple have been near the low end, though some have been at the higher end — see for instance “Science Stunner (11/12): Observations Support Predictions Of Extreme Warming And Worse Droughts This Century.”

Dana Nuccitelli makes some good points on the Economist piece at Skeptical Science:

… the article focused heavily on the slowed global surface warming over the past decade, and a few studies which, based on that slowed surface warming, have concluded that climate sensitivity is relatively low.  However, as we have discussed on Skeptical Science, those estimates do not include the accelerated warming of the deeper oceans over the past decade, and they appear to be overly sensitive to short-term natural variability.  The Economist article touched only briefly on the accelerated deep ocean warming, and oddly seemed to dismiss this data as “obscure.”

The Economist article also referenced the circular Tung and Zhou (2013) paper we addressed here, and suggested that if equilibrium climate sensitivity is 2°C to a doubling of CO2, we might be better off adapting to rather than trying to mitigate climate change.  Unfortunately, as we discussed here, even a 2°C sensitivity would set us on a path for very dangerous climate change unless we take serious steps to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

Ultimately it was rather strange to see such a complex technical subject as climate sensitivity tackled in a business-related publication.  While The Economist made a good effort at the topic, their lack of expertise showed.

Then Nuccitelli reposted “an article published by Zeke Hausfather at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media” so readers could get “a more expert take on climate sensitivity.” I recommend the whole piece. Here’s the key part:

There are several different ways to estimate climate sensitivity:

Examining Earth’s temperature response during the last millennium, glacial periods in the past, or periods even further back in geological time, such as the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum;Looking at recent temperature measurements and data from satellites;Examining the response of Earth’s climate to major volcanic eruptions; andUsing global climate models to test the response of a doubling of CO2 concentrations.

These methods produce generally comparable results, as shown in the figure below.

Figure from Knutti and Hegerl 2008.

… So what about climate sensitivity? We are left going back to the IPCC synthesis, that it is “likely” between 2 C and 4.5 C per doubling of CO2 concentrations, and “very likely” more than 1.5 C. While different researchers have different best estimates (James Annan, for example, says his best estimate is 2.5 C), uncertainties still mean that estimates cannot be narrowed down to a far narrower and more precise range.

And, again, the ECS is not the same as our projected future warming.

What follows is an updated excerpt from my February post. Regular readers don’t need to read it again.

Focusing on the fast-feedback sensitivity perhaps made sense in the distant past when we thought the world would actually listen to climate scientists and so there was some reasonable chance of stabilizing at 560 parts per million atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (double the preindustrial level) — and some hope the slow feedbacks might not matter.

As I explained in Nature online back in 2008 (here), once you factor in carbon-cycle feedbacks, even the uber-cautious Fourth Assessment report (AR4) of the IPCC makes clear we are headed toward 1000 ppm (the A1FI scenario). That conclusion has been supported by just about every major independent analysis, including a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (see Study: We’re Headed To 11°F Warming And Even 7°F Requires “Nearly Quadrupling The Current Rate Of Decarbonisation“). That means it simply doesn’t matter terribly much whether the ECS is 3C, or, say, only 2.5C.

But The Economist concludes:

… a small reduction in estimates of climate sensitivity would seem to be justified: a downwards nudge on various best estimates from 3°C to 2.5°C, perhaps; a lower ceiling (around 4.5°C), certainly.

Even if one agrees with this, it doesn’t merit any celebration, let alone a nearly 3,000-word article.

It is worth noting that while the Thawing Permafrost Could Cause 2.5 Times the Warming of Deforestation (!) and add up to 1.5°F to warming in 2100 by itself, “Participating modeling teams have completed their climate projections in support of the [IPCC's] Fifth Assessment Report, but these projections do not include the permafrost carbon feedback.” D’oh!

Given that the Arctic is already losing ice decades faster than any AR4 model had projected, we should expect that the permafrost will go faster than the models suggest. Indeed a 2008 study by leading tundra experts found “Accelerated Arctic land warming and permafrost degradation during rapid sea ice loss.” The study’s ominous conclusion:

We find that simulated western Arctic land warming trends during rapid sea ice loss are 3.5 times greater than secular 21st century climate-change trends. The accelerated warming signal penetrates up to 1500 km inland….

Anyone who tells you the recent literature suggests things will be better than we thought, hasn’t read the recent literature. In a 2010 AAAS presentation, the late William R. Freudenburg of UC Santa Barbara discussed his research on “the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge“: New scientific findings since the 2007 IPCC report are found to be more than twenty times as likely to indicate that global climate disruption is “worse than previously expected,” rather than “not as bad as previously expected.”

“Projections of global warming relative to pre-industrial for the A1FI emissions scenario” — the one we’re currently on. “Dark shading shows the mean ±1 s.d. [standard deviation] for the tunings to 19 AR4 GCMs [IPCC Fourth Assessment General Circulation Models] and the light shading shows the change in the uncertainty range when … climate-carbon-cycle feedbacks … are included.”

Again, we are headed to 11F and just keeping to 7F will take a major effort. But warming beyond 7F is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable (i.e.  4°C [7F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level,” as climate expert Kevin Anderson explains here.

Everyone interested in what we face should should read the recent World Bank Climate Report, which concluded, “A 4°C [7°F] world can, and must, be avoided” to avert “devastating” impacts. Also worth reading is the Royal Society Special Issue on Global Warming, which details the “hellish vision” of 7°F (4°C) world (and is the source of the figure above). The concluding piece in the issue notes soberly:

… a 4°C world would be facing enormous adaptation challenges in the agricultural sector, with large areas of cropland becoming unsuitable for cultivation, and declining agricultural yields. This world would also rapidly be losing its ecosystem services, owing to large losses in biodiversity, forests, coastal wetlands, mangroves and saltmarshes, and terrestrial carbon stores, supported by an acidified and potentially dysfunctional marine ecosystem. Drought and desertification would be widespread….

In such a 4°C world, the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits for adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world.”

I’ll end by noting once more that the paleoclimate record suggests the ultimate warming we are going to see is likely to be considerably higher than the fast-feedbacks sensitivity suggests:

Science (2009): CO2 levels haven’t been this high for 15 million years, when it was 5° to 10°F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higherScientists analyzed data from a major expedition to retrieve deep marine sediments beneath the Arctic to understand the Paleocene Eocene thermal maximum, a brief period some 55 million years ago of “widespread, extreme climatic warming that was associated with massive atmospheric greenhouse gas input.” This 2006 study, published in Nature (subs. req’d), found Arctic temperatures almost beyond imagination–above 23°C (74°F)–temperatures more than 18°F warmer than current climate models had predicted when applied to this period. The three dozen authors conclude that existing climate models are missing crucial feedbacks that can significantly amplify polar warming.A study published in Geophysical Research Letters (subs. req’d) looked at temperature and atmospheric changes during the Middle Ages. This 2006 study found that the effect of amplifying feedbacks in the climate system–where global warming boosts atmospheric CO2 levels–”will promote warming by an extra 15 percent to 78 percent on a century-scale” compared to typical estimates by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The study notes these results may even be “conservative” because they ignore other greenhouse gases such as methane, whose levels will likely be boosted as temperatures warm.Another study published in Geophysical Research Letters, “Missing feedbacks, asymmetric uncertainties, and the underestimation of future warming” (subs. req’d), looked at temperature and atmospheric changes during the past 400,000 years. This study found evidence for significant increases in both CO2 and methane (CH4) levels as temperatures rise. The conclusion: If our current climate models correctly accounted for such “missing feedbacks,” then “we would be predicting a significantly greater increase in global warming than is currently forecast over the next century and beyond”–as much as 1.5°C warmer this century alone.Science stunner (2011): On our current emissions path, CO2 levels in 2100 will hit levels last seen when the Earth was 29°F (16°C) hotter. Paleoclimate data suggests CO2 “may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models.”jQuery(document).ready(function(){jQuery('#comment_submit').click(function(){if(jQuery('#comment_check:checked').length

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Why The Response To A Philadelphia Abortion Doctor’s Ongoing Murder Trial Gets It All Wrong

A Philadelphia-area abortion doctor is currently on trial for murder, based on gruesome reports about the illegal techniques that he and his staff used to perform late-term abortions for desperate, low-income women. Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s high-profile case is sparking understandable outrage, as evidence has emerged that he may have taken advantage of vulnerable women, violated multiple medical codes, and performed inhumane surgeries.

According to prosecutors, Gosnell’s clinic went 17 years without an inspection — and abortion opponents are leveraging that to go after other abortion clinics that have no affiliation with Gosnell or his crimes. “Unfortunately and tragically in Pennsylvania, facilities were going uninspected for years,” Maria Gallagher, a lobbyist with the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, said in reference to the ongoing trial. That’s a big reason why abortion opponents like Gallagher were able to push Pennsylvania legislators to tighten restrictions on abortion clinics in 2011, updating state law to require abortion clinics to adhere to the same standards as outpatient surgery centers. According to NPR, Gosnell’s case was “mentioned frequently” as Pennsylvania lawmakers considered, and ultimately approved, the unnecessary new restrictions.

If proven guilty, there’s no doubt that Gosnell and his staff committed horrific crimes. But the knee-jerk reaction to his murder trial — the assumption that most abortion doctors aren’t adhering to medical standards, and that the women who visit health clinics are in grave danger of receiving unsafe care — is off-base. In fact, as the right-wing pushes for tighter abortion clinic standards to make sure nothing like this ever happens again, that crusade could end up having exactly the opposite effect.

Pennsylvania’s abortion clinic restrictions fit into a larger anti-choice effort across the country that is solely intended to force abortion clinics to close their doors. In states like North Dakota, Virginia, Indiana, Mississippi, and Texas, abortion opponents are pushing legislation to force abortion clinics to adhere to unneccesary new regulations in the name of “ensuring women’s safety.” That sounds like a noble goal. But these measures — known as the Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP — aren’t really about ensuring women’s safety at all. As Mississippi’s Republican governor once admitted behind closed doors at an anti-choice event, TRAP laws are about indirectly restricting women’s access to abortion by shutting down health clinics.

In Pennsylvania specifically, one Planned Parenthood affiliate was forced to spend nearly a half a million dollars to get two of its clinics into compliance with the new regulations. That involved unnecessary updates like installing hands-free sinks, replacing the floors, and updating the air-conditioning system. The affiliate’s CEO, Dayle Steinberg, explained to NPR that the state’s stricter requirements didn’t actually do anything to improve the care provided to the women at her clinics, where the complication rate is already less than one-tenth of 1 percent. “They were thinly disguised as improving patient safety, when really it was about increasing the cost for abortion providers — hoping that some of them wouldn’t be able to afford it,” Steinberg said.

In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Women’s health advocates consider TRAP measures to be some of the most dangerous threats to women’s access to safe abortion services across the country. In North Dakota, where anti-choice Republicans are advancing the most stringently anti-abortion legislation in the nation, one doctor warned lawmakers that the new TRAP law will force women into dangerous, “backroom” abortion procedures. Retired pediatrician Ted Kleiman worked at a hospital before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, and he watched women die from botched abortions. “The thought of returning to those days is really beyond imagination,” Kleiman told his state lawmakers, urging them not to shut down the only abortion clinic left in North Dakota.

Women’s health advocates, particularly those who work at health clinics, are extremely concerned about ensuring that women receive the highest standards of reproductive care. But clinics that allow women to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester of pregnancy — which involves taking a pill, and is not actually a surgical procedure — aren’t analogous to Gosnell’s clinic, which performed incredibly late-term, illegal abortion services. Over-regulating the clinics like Planned Parenthood’s, where the vast majority of patients are already receiving incredibly safe care, will actually limit women’s options instead of keeping them safe. That could lead more desperate women who feel like they don’t have any other options left to seek out doctors like Gosnell.

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Medicaid Expansion Wrong for SC

‘For every problem,” H.L. Mencken wrote, “there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong.” Enter Obamacare and one of the main ways that it purports to reduce the number of uninsured: putting more people on Medicaid.

S.C. legislators are being pressured to do just that. The House has rejected the idea, and Gov. Nikki Haley has vowed to veto it, but it’s not dead. And if they ultimately sign on to the idea, they’ll find they’ve made a costly mistake and created a long-term fiscal problem.

Specifically, some in the Legislature want to expand Medicaid eligibility to more adults during the three years the federal government covers the expansion population.

But this allegedly good deal will only bring turmoil to the state’s budget in the future. For one thing, Medicaid expansion is not “catch and release” for the states. Once such an expansion has occurred, it is politically difficult if not impossible to roll back enrollment. It becomes a permanent entitlement — and one that is completely unaffordable.

If South Carolina expands Medicaid, taxpayers would be on the hook for millions. According to our research, the expansion would begin costing the state just four years from now and would cost $612 million over the next 10 years — outstripping any purported “savings.”

Already Medicaid is consuming a greater share of the state budget. Expanding Medicaid will make it even larger and harder to pay for other state priorities, including schools and roads, in the future.

This also assumes that federal funding for the Medicaid expansion goes unchanged. Right now, Washington is struggling to get the country’s fiscal house in order. Any serious efforts to address this crisis would have to address real entitlement reform, including Medicaid.

Although administration officials say Medicaid is off the table, it was just last year that the president’s own budget proposed changing Medicaid financing. So these promises are good only until the president needs money to pay for his many other spending priorities.

But affordability isn’t the only issue. Extending coverage via Medicaid doesn’t mean that individuals will, in fact, gain access to the health care they need. Already, it is becoming harder to find a doctor who will accept a new Medicaid patient, primarily due to lower payment rates.

Obamacare tries to temporarily raise Medicaid payment rates for some doctors. But here too it leaves the state holding the bag and ignores the reality that you can’t add millions of people on to a program where there are fewer doctors to see them. Not only will new and existing patients have a harder time finding a doctor, but the doctors will have less time to spend with each patient. The expansion of Medicaid also will displace private insurance and shift more of the cost of health care to the few who still have private insurance.

Who suffers the most if this happens? The needy, of course, including children. Medicaid doesn’t pay for many procedures, and physicians are only able to manage because of their non-Medicaid patients. If more people are dumped into the program, that lack of compensation will only worsen, and the doctors will be forced to do more for even less.

A massive expansion of Medicaid will not meet the needs of those it is intended to reach and will only further exacerbate the challenges of delivering quality care to those currently on it. Medicaid needs reform, not expansion. These reforms can start now with states, like South Carolina, working to develop their own solution for addressing the needs of the uninsured. Ideas that don’t depend on approval or more financing from the federal government.

But as the Hippocratic Oath says, “First do no harm.” S.C. legislators can honor that dictum by not expanding their Medicaid program.

-Former Sen. DeMint is president-elect of the Heritage Foundation.

First appeared in The State.

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Conservapedia proven wrong

(Difference between revisions)|Conservapedia insists that Hugo Chavez has been dead since December|Conservapedia insists that Hugo Chavez has been dead since December|Chavez had certainly been very ill and did die, but not until March, 2013 - a fact contradicted by no one except Conservapedia. Chavez's unembalmed body lay for public viewing for about a week after his death. Had he died in December, his body would have been in note state to be seen, as it would have undergone severe decomposition in that period of time.[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-venezuela-chavez-embalming-idUSBRE92C1GC20130313 Venezuela may be unable to embalm Chavez's remains]|Chavez had certainly been very ill and did die, but not until March, 2013 - a fact contradicted by no one except Conservapedia. Chavez's unembalmed body lay for public viewing for about a week after his death. Had he died in December, his body would have been in no state to be seen, as it would have undergone severe decomposition in that period of time.[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-venezuela-chavez-embalming-idUSBRE92C1GC20130313 Venezuela may be unable to embalm Chavez's remains]

Conservapedia is repeatedly proven right, and even when its predictions appear to be off, the underlying point may still be proven true. This article will keep a running tabulation of predictions that critics of Conservapedia claim were wrong. Since the predictive validity of an incorrect prediction can be mitigated by an ex post justification, space has been provided for Conservapedia editors to provide such a justification under the Conservapedia Response column.

Unlike liberals, Conservatives are willing to admit their mistakes; they don't hide differences of opinion; they concede the existence and value of other perspectives than their own.

Examples of incorrect predictions include:

Date of Prognostication Conservapedia Prediction Actual Result Conservapedia's Response Date of Result Fidel Castro has been dead for several years.[1] There has been no public appearance with speaking by Fidel Castro since he checked into a Cuban hospital with a serious illness in 2006, even though he is portrayed privately as being in exemplary health; there have been no recorded spoken words during private appearances, and no claims of any further medical complications. The communist media has released a few pictures of people who are purportedly Fidel Castro -- often, despite hot weather, having scarfs to conceal the age of the neck of the photographed look-alike.[2][3][4] No lamestream media source has contradicted the Communist media's claims that a fit and healthy Fidel exists. Many liberals, including the New York Times, reported on an alleged meeting between Fidel Castro and Pope Benedict XVI on March 28, 2012.[5][6]

A photograph appeared on the front page of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal on March 29 with the caption "Fidel Castro, an ex-Jesuit-school student, met on Wednesday with Pope Benedict XVI in Havana after the Catholic leader denounced 'fanaticism' and called for an end to Cuba's isolation".

Just as the lamestream media did not criticize, in a timely manner, claims made by the communist government of North Korea that its ruler scored many holes-in-one during a round of golf, the media are silent about implausible claims that Fidel Castro is doing well nearly six years after he was last seen in public. Notice how there are no reports of Castro being hospitalized anymore.

Prominent liberals and leftist newspapers are reluctant to state clearly that Castro is still alive, and there are no suggestions that Obama should meet with him. A simple comparison of the recent photos with authenticated photos of Castro show numerous differences -- in height, in the shape of the nose, and in a varicose vein and skin spots -- that are not adequately explained by his advanced age. See Mystery:Did a Fake Fidel Castro Meet the Pope?

Socialism and same-sex marriage will significantly damage Canada's performance at the 2010 Winter Olympics.[7] Canada sets record for most gold medals by a country in a single Olympics, 14. [8] First host country to win most gold medals since 1952. [9] Third in overall medal count (out of 82 countries). Canada, despite being the host country, was disappointed by its third-place finish in the overall medal count, and struggled even to win the gold medals in men's and women's hockey, its national pasttime. By winning medals in snowboarding, freestyle skiing and other "joke sports," Canada did salvage some national pride by setting a record for the number of gold medals in the off-season games.[8] No mention of alcohol in cause of death. Death blamed on fall and renal failure.[10] Coleman had suffered from focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, an autoimmune kidney disease, and had undergone two kidney transplants: one in 1973, when he was 5 years old, and another in 1984, when he was 16. The transplants were unsuccessful, and he was on daily dialysis.[11] Conservapedia predicts Sen. John McCain would endorse Newt Gingrich between the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.[12] John McCain endorsed Mitt Romney.[13] Conservapedia predicted the timing correctly, and presumably Gingrich's poor showing in the Iowa Caucuses caused McCain, in a surprise, to back Romney. The press conference itself was a disaster, however; McCain does not excite or charm the faithful anymore. He would likely become Romney's Secretary of Defense and dictate his foreign policy. Mitt Romney did worse than polling indicated in New Hampshire after McCain endorsed him. Conservapedia predicts that the National Right to Life Committee will endorse Newt Gingrich in December 2011.[12] NRTLC withheld its endorsements until it was obvious Mitt Romney would win, and then endorsed him. Conservapedia predicts Mike Huckabee will endorse Newt Gingrich before the Iowa cauacus.[12] As of early March, Huckabee has made no endorsement, and it seems highly unlikely he will endorse Gingrich now that his campaign is faltering. Rick Santorum will endorse Mitt Romney between the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire Primary. [12] Santorum unexpectedly quit the campaign in April and promised to help Romney. Conservapedia predicts Donald Trump would endorse Newt Gingrich for the GOP nomination between the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.[14] Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney.[15] Conservapedia correctly ranked the flaky Donald Trump as an insignificant "3" on a scale of "1" to "10" in endorsement significance, and Conservapedia predicted correctly as to timing and/or substance, and often both, for #5, #7, and #10 in greater significance than Trump. Gingrich dropped out of the race; Romney wins Republican nomination.[16][17] As Conservapedia predicted, Romney was not elected, and Gingrich would have been a better nominee. It is not yet known if Gingrich will run again, but Romney will not. Conservapedia predicts Sen. Lindsey Graham would endorse Newt Gingrich prior to the South Carolina Primary.[18] Sen. Graham made no candidate endorsement before the primary. Graham stated he didn't plan to support any Republican candidate (and, as of early March, he has not[19]) and explicitly stated he would not endorse Newt Gingrich.[20] Sen. Graham is a Gingrich supporter, but withheld his endorsement until later in the primary process for political reasons. Conservapedia claims Jeb Bush is the most likely to become the Republican presidential nominee, even though he was not running. He would get the position after a deadlock at the Republican National Convention.[21] Mitt Romney becomes the Republican presidential candidate and loses in the general election to Barack Obama. Jeb Bush would have been a stronger nominee than Mitt Romney, and it remains unexplained why Bush did not run and Republicans did not nominate the stronger candidate. "Leftists will likely pick George Clooney, a long-time supporter of liberal causes, as 'best actor' at tonight's Academy Awards".[22] French actor (and fellow liberal favorite) Jean Dujardin wins the Academy Award for best actor. [23] Clooney disappointed liberals with remarks about not becoming too active in politics, and another liberal favorite, Brad Pitt, competed for the same prize and likely split the leftist votes. "Conservapedia predicts that conservative Rick Santorum will defeat RINO Mitt Romney in the crucial Michigan primary today, despite Romney boasting on Sunday that he would win".[24] Mitt Romney wins the Michigan primary with 41% of the popular vote to Rick Santorum's 38%.[25] Romney also won 16 of the state's 30 delegates[26], making him the winner by any measure. Although Santorum won as many districts as Romney, RINOs inexplicably awarded 2 at-large delegates to Romney rather than splitting them fairly;[27] Santorum announced that he will challenge the senseless decision to award both at-large delegates to Romney. RINOs also denied for weeks Santorum's victory in Iowa, which Conservapedia also forecast. Conservapedia predicts that after Santorum ended his presidential campaign, he would campaign against Newt Gingrich for Mitt Romney.[28] Santorum did not campaign against Gingrich, nor has he endorsed Romney, as of late April. Santorum stayed on the ballot and allowed substantial votes to be cast for him, thereby continuing to prevent Gingrich from gaining support, rather than endorsing Gingrich as Rick Perry did. Conservapedia predicts that Barack Obama will lose reelection due to an "arithmetic pattern": never before has control of the Presidency alternated between political parties in a 2-2-2-2 pattern. Barack Obama was elected to a second term. Conservapedia predicts that the Supreme Court will find ObamaCare's "key part" to be unconstitutional. [4] [5] The Supreme Court upholds the individual mandate, and limits, but does not strike down, the Medicaid provision. The Court rejected the liberal attempts to justify the constitutionality of the mandate under the Commerce Clause. Conservapedia claims that news of a pregnant woman competing in the Olympics will not be reported in the "lamestream" media.[29] The story was, in fact, already in the New York Times on 16 July 2012,[30] and in other liberal news sources[31] Conservapedia predicts that Great Britain will under-achieve in the 2012 Olympic Games Team GB completed their best medal haul ever. Andy Schlafly: "Britain has done remarkably well in the past week, and some of its gold medals (e.g., Andy Murray in tennis) were nothing short of spectacular. Conservatives accept the real facts, even when (in this case) it is contrary to American bravado." [6] Conservapedia stated a counterexample to relativity: "Despite wasting millions of taxpayer dollars searching for gravitational waves predicted by the theory, none has ever been found.[32] Sound like global warming?" Gravitational waves were detected [7], confirming a prediction of the theory of relativity. In fact, gravitational waves have not been seen, and the hype in the headline of the liberal media story is undermined by the fine print of the article itself. Conservapedia predicts that "By Tuesday night [Election Night], most American voters will have cast their ballots against Barack Obama."[33] Barack Obama won an absolute majority (50.96%[34]) of all Presidential votes, meaning that more voters cast votes for Obama than for all other candidates combined.[35] The prediction said American voters, not all votes cast. Conservapedia says that the power outage during Super Bowl XLVII was "almost certainly the result of 'limit energy' policies." After investigation, the power outage was attributed to an electrical relay intended to prevent power outages; the threshold for the relay tripping was either set too low or the relay failed. [8][9] Backup generators kicked in immediately as per design,[10] but stadium lights take up to half an hour to reach full power. [11] Additionally, the half time show was powered by a separate pair of generators.[12] No credible source suggests that energy rationing contributed to the outage. Moreover, energy-rationed lights could not be turned back on quickly; no generator kicked in quickly because of how liberals limit the use and size of generators. The selection of another conservative was similar to what Conservapedia predicted, and just as surprising to the liberal "experts". Conservapedia insists that Hugo Chavez has been dead since December Chavez had certainly been very ill and did die, but not until March, 2013 - a fact contradicted by no one except Conservapedia. Chavez's unembalmed body lay for public viewing for about a week after his death. Had he died in December, his body would have been in no state to be seen, as it would have undergone severe decomposition in that period of time.[38] ? Talk:Fidel_Castro#Castro_Dead.3F? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/fidel-castro/9062507/Fidel-Castro-makes-rare-public-appearance-at-Havana-book-launch.html? http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/national_world&id=8220178? http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/07/10/fidel-castro-shown-rare-public-appearance-new-photos-posted-web-cuban/? http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/28/2718636/pope-benedict-xvi-enters-revolution.html? http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/pope-meets-fidel-castro-as-papal-visit-to-cuba-wraps-up/article2383869/? http://conservapedia.com/Debate:Relationship_between_Socialism_and_athletic_performance? 8.0 8.1 http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/story/2010/02/27/sp-canada-gold-otp.html? http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/27/us-clinches-medals-total-canada-most-golds/? http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/gary-colemans-cause-of-death-revealed-2010146? Gary Coleman dead at 42 thewrap.com, May 28, 2010, retrieved April 27, 2012? 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=United_States_Presidential_Race_-_Endorsements_for_Republicans_2012&oldid=944513? http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/john-mccain-endorses-mitt-romney-hampshire-primary-article-1.1000891?localLinksEnabled=false? http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=United_States_Presidential_Race_-_Endorsements_for_Republicans_2012&action=historysubmit&diff=944605&oldid=944516? Donald Trump endorses Mitt Romney in Los Vegas Viser, Matt, boston.com, February 2, 2012, retrieved February 2, 2012.? [1]? [2]? http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=United_States_Presidential_Race_-_Endorsements_for_Republicans_2012&action=historysubmit&diff=946375&oldid=946358? http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/26/graham-mccain-predict-big-primary-night-for-romney/? http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/198593-graham-wont-endorse-gingrich-but-believes-he-can-beat-obama? http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Presidential_Election_2012&curid=92243&diff=959694&oldid=959693? http://conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Template%3AMainpageright&action=historysubmit&diff=964323&oldid=964286? http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/46536455#.T00eTbJ418E? http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Template%3AMainpageright&action=historysubmit&diff=964606&oldid=964594? http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2012/michigan-primary-feb-28? http://www.tv20detroit.com/news/local/At-Large-Delegates-to-Romney-141072833.html? http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-takes-most-michigan-delegates-20120301,0,7058178.story? [3]? http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=2012_Summer_Olympics&action=historysubmit&diff=996628&oldid=996624? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/sports/olympics/17iht-oly17.html?_r=1? http://www.espnstar.com/olympics/shooting/news/detail/item832224/Nur-Suryani-off-target-in-London/? http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.3781? http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Template:Mainpageright&diff=prev&oldid=1016980? This figure is based on claims of counting of mail-in ballots done long after Election Day, without the safeguard of poll-watchers? http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results? http://conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Template:Mainpageright&curid=123765&diff=1034181&oldid=1034156? http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/13/cardinals-elect-new-pope/?hpt=hp_t1? Venezuela may be unable to embalm Chavez's remains

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Medicaid Expansion Wrong for SC

‘For every problem,” H.L. Mencken wrote, “there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong.” Enter Obamacare and one of the main ways that it purports to reduce the number of uninsured: putting more people on Medicaid.

S.C. legislators are being pressured to do just that. The House has rejected the idea, and Gov. Nikki Haley has vowed to veto it, but it’s not dead. And if they ultimately sign on to the idea, they’ll find they’ve made a costly mistake and created a long-term fiscal problem.

Specifically, some in the Legislature want to expand Medicaid eligibility to more adults during the three years the federal government covers the expansion population.

But this allegedly good deal will only bring turmoil to the state’s budget in the future. For one thing, Medicaid expansion is not “catch and release” for the states. Once such an expansion has occurred, it is politically difficult if not impossible to roll back enrollment. It becomes a permanent entitlement — and one that is completely unaffordable.

If South Carolina expands Medicaid, taxpayers would be on the hook for millions. According to our research, the expansion would begin costing the state just four years from now and would cost $612 million over the next 10 years — outstripping any purported “savings.”

Already Medicaid is consuming a greater share of the state budget. Expanding Medicaid will make it even larger and harder to pay for other state priorities, including schools and roads, in the future.

This also assumes that federal funding for the Medicaid expansion goes unchanged. Right now, Washington is struggling to get the country’s fiscal house in order. Any serious efforts to address this crisis would have to address real entitlement reform, including Medicaid.

Although administration officials say Medicaid is off the table, it was just last year that the president’s own budget proposed changing Medicaid financing. So these promises are good only until the president needs money to pay for his many other spending priorities.

But affordability isn’t the only issue. Extending coverage via Medicaid doesn’t mean that individuals will, in fact, gain access to the health care they need. Already, it is becoming harder to find a doctor who will accept a new Medicaid patient, primarily due to lower payment rates.

Obamacare tries to temporarily raise Medicaid payment rates for some doctors. But here too it leaves the state holding the bag and ignores the reality that you can’t add millions of people on to a program where there are fewer doctors to see them. Not only will new and existing patients have a harder time finding a doctor, but the doctors will have less time to spend with each patient. The expansion of Medicaid also will displace private insurance and shift more of the cost of health care to the few who still have private insurance.

Who suffers the most if this happens? The needy, of course, including children. Medicaid doesn’t pay for many procedures, and physicians are only able to manage because of their non-Medicaid patients. If more people are dumped into the program, that lack of compensation will only worsen, and the doctors will be forced to do more for even less.

A massive expansion of Medicaid will not meet the needs of those it is intended to reach and will only further exacerbate the challenges of delivering quality care to those currently on it. Medicaid needs reform, not expansion. These reforms can start now with states, like South Carolina, working to develop their own solution for addressing the needs of the uninsured. Ideas that don’t depend on approval or more financing from the federal government.

But as the Hippocratic Oath says, “First do no harm.” S.C. legislators can honor that dictum by not expanding their Medicaid program.

-Former Sen. DeMint is president-elect of the Heritage Foundation.

First appeared in The State.

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Sad But True: WSJ Editorial Saying Obama Administration Doesn’t Drill Enough Is Wrong

Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial board published a gem of an editorial titled “Drill, Barack, Drill.” You might be able to guess what it’s about from the title.

It takes a report from the Congressional Research Service about drilling on public lands, engages in some flagrant cherry picking, shoots out some outright falsehoods, and concludes that the Obama Administration has been standing in the way of fossil fuel development on federal lands.

The truth, while sobering, is very different from the creative accounting performed by the Wall Street Journal ed board. Here’s the reality.

WSJ Says: “All of the increased [oil] production from 2007 from 2012 took place on non-federal lands.”

That’s one cherry to pick. There’s a whole tree though. Looking at the whole CRS report gives you the full story:

When comparing fiscal year 2010 with 2007, growth in the federal share of production was about 82 percent of the total.

That’s a lot of growth in production not on private and state lands. The report also says that crude oil production will continue to be significant, and “could remain consistently higher than previous decades.”

WSJ Says: “Federal share of total U.S. oil production has slid under Mr. Obama to 26% in fiscal year 2012 from 31% in fiscal 2008.”

In fact, oil production from federally owned places was higher in every one of the past four years compared to 2008, when oil hit a record high price of $142.50 per barrel. In fiscal year 2008, total crude oil production was 1,550 thousand barrels per day. The rate of production for the next four years has been: 1,731, 1,989, 1,715, and 1,627 thousand barrels per day. The Wall Street Journal may be trying hard here, but none of those numbers is smaller than 1,550.

The domestic boom is driven by ample tight oil (shale oil) and shale gas resources on private lands. In 2012, Adam Sieminski, the Administrator of the Energy Information Administration testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that:

Because the shale resource basins are largely outside of the Federal lands, so too is shale production. In this case, the geology is working in favor of non-Federal landowners.

The rapid increase in natural gas production from shale resources, found largely outside the Federal lands, over the last 5 years has significantly reduced natural gas prices and the relative attractiveness of conventional natural gas resources, including those of Federal and Indian lands. (EIA)

Also, most oil and gas shale plays in the contiguous U.S. are on private lands:

WSJ Says: “The sharp drop in production on federal lands is a direct result of Obama Administration policies. They include a drilling moratorium imposed after the 2012 Deepwater Horizon Spill…”

The CRS report helpfully points out that “offshore, most of the 1.7 billion acres of federal water are no longer under leasing and development moratoria.” Since the new standards were put into place, the Obama administration has approved over 600 permits for activities at hundreds of wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling is nearly up to pre-Deepwater Horizon levels.

Specifically, per the Energy Information Administration Short Term Energy Outlook released last month:

During 2012, oil production in the Federal GOM [Gulf of Mexico] is projected to have increased from about 1.31 million bbl/d [barrels per day] in January to about 1.39 million bbl/d in December (up 6 percent). … EIA expects Federal GOM production to increase from an average 1.27 million bbl/d in 2012 to an average 1.39 million bbl/d in 2013.

WSJ Says: “Average time to process a federal application for a drilling permit increased 41% from 2006 to 2011—to 301 days”

Again, the CRS report contains information that the Journal must have missed:

In 2006 it took the BLM [Bureau of Land Management] an average of 127 days to process an APD [application for drill permit], while in 2011 it took BLM 71 days. In 2006, the industry took an average of 91 days to complete an APD, but in 2011, industry took 236 days.

The delay in the permitting process is not the in the federal government’s court, but rather the oil and gas industry. The BLM is almost twice as quick in processing permits as it was in 2006.

The report also helpfully puts in context the claim that private lands permitting takes less time than public lands permitting:

“Some critics of this lengthy timeframe highlight the relatively speedy process for permit processing on private lands. However, crude oil development on federal lands takes place in a wholly different regulatory framework than that of oil development on private lands…. A private versus federal permitting regime does not lend itself to an ‘apples-to-apples’ comparison.”

WSJ Says: “The few leases he has put up for auction contain land that is of little value to drillers”

Since FY 2006, there has been nearly a 67 percent decline in the amount of public land nominated by the industry in the Rocky Mountain States. And remember, the Administration has approved more than 600 permits in the Gulf of Mexico alone.

Last year, a report from Rep. Ed Markey showed that 131 oil and gas companies had 3,684 idle leases in the Gulf of Mexico alone. That means oil companies are not using 72 percent of offshore acres, and 56 percent of total offshore acres. This is 20.7 million acres we’re talking here — not small potatoes.

WSJ Says: “Readers may recall that Mitt Romney raised this issue in the second presidential debate. Mr. Obama responded that “What you’re saying is just not true. It’s not true.” The Congressional Research Service now documents that it is true….”

Mitt, it’s still not true. Read the report — all of it.

* * *

It would be great for the climate if federal oil and gas production were slowing as we transition to renewables. The takeaway of this sad state of affairs is that we continue to pursue hydrocarbons to burn, at rates equal to or greater than historical rates.

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Why Medicaid Expansion Is Still Wrong for the States

Governor John Kasich now joins the list of governors that are looking to expand their Medicaid programs. In some instances, the logic of such a decision makes sense. Democratic governors have traditionally supported expanding the role of Medicaid. But the decision by Republican governors, such as Governor Jan Brewer (Ariz.), Governor Jack Dalrymple (N.D.), Governor Susana Martinez (N.M.), Governor Brian Sandoval (R., Nev.), and now Governor John Kasich (R., Ohio), is puzzling.

Like most government programs, Medicaid promises more than it delivers. While it consumes an ever increasing portion of state budgets — crowding out other state priorities, such as education and transportation — its track record for delivering quality health care to those in need falls short. Endorsing the expansion ignores these underlying problems and in some instances seems to make them worse.

Of these five Republican governors, four joined the lawsuit against the Obama administration regarding the coercive nature of the Medicaid expansion. It is troubling that now that the Medicaid expansion has been deemed voluntary not mandatory by the Supreme Court, these governors are perfectly happy to have the federal government coerce them into the expansion with the enticement of new federal dollars.

Second, many of these governors argue that the Medicaid expansion is actually good fiscal policy. These governors may be looking at a short-term bump in new federal dollars, but the longer view shows that over time this new revenue disappears and the cost of expansion continues to rise. A recent study in support of the expansion in Ohio supports this conclusion. There are also many underlying assumptions that raise further questions related to the true cost of the expansion.

One is the assumption that the federal funding will remain constant. However, here too the longer view indicates the opposite. As federal policymakers debate the course for fixing the country’s fiscal woes, it is inevitable that if these efforts are serious, entitlement programs such as Medicaid will need to be on the table. Although the administration is trying to distance itself from its previous recommendations on federal financing of Medicaid, it is impossible to guarantee that the federal dollars will remain untouched.

Some governors have made their willingness to expand the program contingent on the federal government’s keeping its funding promises. They that if the federal funding changes, the states will opt out of the expansion. Such an opt-out strategy seems difficult. It is the exception not the norm for a state to scale back its Medicaid program. As a matter of fact, while there may be periods of slowing enrollment, overall enrollment continues to climb. From a practical position, it also remains unclear the process by which a state would opt out and the role that the secretary of HHS would have in that process.

Some expansion supporters argue that choosing not to expand Medicaid would mean that a state opting out would just be leaving money on the table, and that this money will include money from the non-expanding state’s federal taxpayers. Rather than a race to the bottom to scoop up as much federal tax dollars as possible in support of a program with poor results, the better solution would be for the states to recommend that Congress eliminate the enhanced federal matching funds. That would remove the temptation of federal dollars to do bad policy.

By 2017, one in four Americans is expected to be on Medicaid. In states that are trying to jumpstart their economy, it seems governors should be working to reduce dependence on the welfare state, not add millions more to it. It should be focused on getting people back to work, not creating incentives that keep people out of work. And states should be focused on fixing the program for those who are on it today rather than dumping more people into an already broken government program.

There needs to be a better solution. Simply because a governor wants to expand Medicaid doesn’t mean the legislature has to agree. State officials should be advancing reforms at the state level that move Medicaid in the right direction, not the wrong one.

— Nina Owcharenko is Director of the Center for Health Policy Studies and the Preston A. Wells Jr. Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

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Why New York City’s Effort To Shame Teens Is The Wrong Way To Promote Sexual Health

So far, New York City’s campaign to prevent unintended teen pregnancy has been extremely successful. The public schools in the city have instituted a mandatory comprehensive sex ed curriculum, as well as a program to help expand teen’s access to contraception — both of which have directly contributed to the fact that the teen pregnancy rate in New York City has plummeted by 27 percent over the past decade.

The city’s Human Resources Administration is now expanding those efforts to a broader marketing campaign, rolling out a series of advertisements that intend to communicate the “real cost of teen pregnancy.” The ads, which will appear on subways and bus shelters across the city, are an attempt to frighten teens out of having a child at a young age:

This strategy may not be totally without precedent. Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff points out that a similar type of advertising campaign in Milwaukee helped contribute to a drop in teen pregnancies. But the huge drop that New York City has already seen over the past 10 years belies a simple fact: edgy advertising isn’t nearly as important as actually equipping young people with the resources they need to understand their bodies and mitigate their sexual risk.

In fact, a recent study demonstrates that providing young adults with the support they need can be a more effective method of preventing unwanted pregnancies than shaming teens about their sexuality. Throughout the course of the study, the teens that participated in a program tailored to help young people make good sexual choices — including providing providing personal case management, youth leadership opportunities, and specialized counseling — were much more likely to make safe sexual choices, like using condoms, than the teens who weren’t in that program. And the healthy sexual behavior extended beyond simply using protection. The teens who received support and counseling were also more likely to be able to recognize unwanted sexual attention, and refute those type of advances — in other words, they became better aware of their physical boundaries and their ability to withhold consent.

Ultimately, the United States needs a huge overhaul when it comes to society’s approach to teen sexuality. Too often, teens aren’t given accurate information about their bodies, aren’t empowered to make their own decisions, don’t know what “consent” is and how to navigate it, and are ultimately too ashamed to ask for the resources they need. Young adults need to be trusted with information about sexuality — and those who are at a higher risk for unintended pregnancy need to be supported, not stigmatized for the “failures” that result from their sexual behavior.

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Colorado Lawmaker: Women Can’t Tell Whether They’re About To Be Raped, May Shoot The Wrong Person

State Rep. Joe Salazar (D-CO)

In a debate over whether to prevent college students from carrying concealed weapons on campus on Friday, Colorado Rep. Joe Salazar (D) suggested that female students are too paranoid to responsibly use a firearm. According to the state lawmaker, women may not be able to tell whether or not they’re actually in danger and end up pulling the trigger on an innocent person:

SALAZAR: It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, it’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at. And you don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop … pop a round at somebody.

Gun advocates often attempt to frame concealed carry permits as a women’s issue, claiming that women need the added protection of a firearm to fight back against attempted incidents of sexual assault. Domestic violence counselors vehemently oppose the policy, pointing out that hidden guns on campus won’t actually help address rape culture, particularly since an estimated two-thirds of sexual assaults occur between people who already know each other. But suggesting that women are too emotional to be able to identify sexual violence — and implying that paranoid women may sometimes “feel like” they’re in trouble when they “may actually not be” — doesn’t help address pervasive issues of rape culture, either.

Salazar apologized for his remarks today. “I’m sorry if I offended anyone,” his statement read. “That was not my intention. We were having a public policy debate on whether or not guns makes people safer on campus. I don’t believe they do. That was the point I was trying to make.”

Insensitive comments about rape certainly know no party lines. But concrete policies to address issues of sexual assault have unfortunately become more partisan in recent months. The federal Violence Against Women Act, which has strengthened systems to help survivors of sexual violence for the past 18 years — and which specifically impacts college students, since it helps fund campus programs to address dating violence — has been locked in a political battle in Congress ever since GOP lawmakers balked at adding expanding protections for diverse communities. Republicans in Congress actually let it expire for the first time ever during the last legislative session.

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Cal Thomas Column: Contraception Mandate Is Wrong Because Government Shouldn't Define What Is and Isn't a Church

Under pressure from religious and conservative groups, the Obama administration has offered another compromise on the issue of birth control coverage within the Affordable Care Act. While exempting churches and some religiously affiliated institutions, such as hospitals and universities, from supplying the coverage, the new proposal calls for their employees to receive stand-alone private insurance policies providing birth control coverage at no cost. Insurance companies will foot the bill, but only the naive can possibly think the cost won't find its way back to the institution in the form of higher health premiums.

Numerous lawsuits filed against this and other portions of "Obamacare" will proceed and for good reason: the federal government seems intent on setting rules on matters of conscience and worse, defining what constitutes a church, or religious institution.

One of the litigants is Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores, whose CEO, David Green, is an evangelical Christian. Green says, "We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate." That mandate includes, in addition to contraceptive coverage in employees' health care, "preventive services," including "morning-after" pills and other drugs, which Green considers abortifacients. After Hobby Lobby's appeal to Justice Sonia Sotomayor was rejected, the Christian Post reports the company then made plans to "...shift the beginning of its employee health plan to temporarily avoid $1.3 million a day in fines for each day since Jan. 1 that it did not comply with the Affordable Care Act." (According to the new health care law, businesses with more than 50 employees that refuse to comply can be fined by the IRS $100 per day per employee.) Hobby Lobby's appeals continue.

The core issue as I see it -- and there are others -- is whether the government has the right to define a church as a building in which people congregate on Sundays and whether a private company headed by a religious person qualifies for conscience exemptions. For government to decide such things violates the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment, which state "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." and appears to put the state in the position of supreme authority and arbiter of what constitutes "legitimate" religious faith and practice. The Supreme Court will likely have to resolve its constitutionality.

Permit me to offer the justices some assistance.

The early church was not a building with a towering steeple. The early church met in homes. If one accepts New Testament teaching (and what higher authority on the church could there be?), the concept of the church being an organism that resides in each individual believer is clearly spelled out in several passages.

Paul the Apostle writes in his letter to the Colossians (1:24) about the "body" of Jesus Christ, "which is the church." By this, he means the "body of believers" in whom Christ dwells. Wherever that body is, whether an individual, or a group of believers, that's the church. It was only later that this concept of church was turned into something with expensive buildings, tax exemptions and denominations.

The same theme can be found in Revelation where John is asked by Jesus to write letters to several churches. Those, too, were bodies of believers, not physical structures.

In the Old Testament, God told Solomon that while He was too big to live in buildings, He would "dwell" in the Temple Solomon built for Him. Ultimately, though, He said He had other intentions: "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people." (Jeremiah 31:33)

That was and remains for believers the authentic church, so when people say, "I am going to church," it is an impossibility because they can't go to themselves.

The administration's efforts to effectively gerrymander lines between what it considers legitimate religious practice and the secular is what the Founders hoped to avoid when they linked the establishment clause with the free exercise clause.

That is why, among other reasons, government should not mandate birth control coverage as part of any national health care plan.

(Readers may e-mail Cal Thomas at tmseditors@tribune.com.)

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Why Medicaid Expansion Is Still Wrong for the States

Governor John Kasich now joins the list of governors that are looking to expand their Medicaid programs. In some instances, the logic of such a decision makes sense. Democratic governors have traditionally supported expanding the role of Medicaid. But the decision by Republican governors, such as Governor Jan Brewer (Ariz.), Governor Jack Dalrymple (N.D.), Governor Susana Martinez (N.M.), Governor Brian Sandoval (R., Nev.), and now Governor John Kasich (R., Ohio), is puzzling.

Like most government programs, Medicaid promises more than it delivers. While it consumes an ever increasing portion of state budgets — crowding out other state priorities, such as education and transportation — its track record for delivering quality health care to those in need falls short. Endorsing the expansion ignores these underlying problems and in some instances seems to make them worse.

Of these five Republican governors, four joined the lawsuit against the Obama administration regarding the coercive nature of the Medicaid expansion. It is troubling that now that the Medicaid expansion has been deemed voluntary not mandatory by the Supreme Court, these governors are perfectly happy to have the federal government coerce them into the expansion with the enticement of new federal dollars.

Second, many of these governors argue that the Medicaid expansion is actually good fiscal policy. These governors may be looking at a short-term bump in new federal dollars, but the longer view shows that over time this new revenue disappears and the cost of expansion continues to rise. A recent study in support of the expansion in Ohio supports this conclusion. There are also many underlying assumptions that raise further questions related to the true cost of the expansion.

One is the assumption that the federal funding will remain constant. However, here too the longer view indicates the opposite. As federal policymakers debate the course for fixing the country’s fiscal woes, it is inevitable that if these efforts are serious, entitlement programs such as Medicaid will need to be on the table. Although the administration is trying to distance itself from its previous recommendations on federal financing of Medicaid, it is impossible to guarantee that the federal dollars will remain untouched.

Some governors have made their willingness to expand the program contingent on the federal government’s keeping its funding promises. They that if the federal funding changes, the states will opt out of the expansion. Such an opt-out strategy seems difficult. It is the exception not the norm for a state to scale back its Medicaid program. As a matter of fact, while there may be periods of slowing enrollment, overall enrollment continues to climb. From a practical position, it also remains unclear the process by which a state would opt out and the role that the secretary of HHS would have in that process.

Some expansion supporters argue that choosing not to expand Medicaid would mean that a state opting out would just be leaving money on the table, and that this money will include money from the non-expanding state’s federal taxpayers. Rather than a race to the bottom to scoop up as much federal tax dollars as possible in support of a program with poor results, the better solution would be for the states to recommend that Congress eliminate the enhanced federal matching funds. That would remove the temptation of federal dollars to do bad policy.

By 2017, one in four Americans is expected to be on Medicaid. In states that are trying to jumpstart their economy, it seems governors should be working to reduce dependence on the welfare state, not add millions more to it. It should be focused on getting people back to work, not creating incentives that keep people out of work. And states should be focused on fixing the program for those who are on it today rather than dumping more people into an already broken government program.

There needs to be a better solution. Simply because a governor wants to expand Medicaid doesn’t mean the legislature has to agree. State officials should be advancing reforms at the state level that move Medicaid in the right direction, not the wrong one.

— Nina Owcharenko is Director of the Center for Health Policy Studies and the Preston A. Wells Jr. Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

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