Donning glittery signs and Rosie the Riveter-esque head gear, more than a dozen pro-choice women — and a couple of men — took to the streets of Lafayette Saturday afternoon for a march against federal defunding of Planned Parenthood and other women’s health programs. [The] continuing resolution would cut by 10 percent the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC, which serves 9.6 million low-income women, new mothers, and infants each month, and has been linked in studies to higher birth weight and lower infant mortality.
“In Louisiana, we already have limited resources for women,” said Lauren Vice, a UL visual arts student and one of the protest coordinators. “We want to introduce to the town that this exists, a group of people in a conservative area who believe in choice. We want our autonomy protected. It’s ridiculous that we have to walk around town carrying glittery signs to ask for adequate health care. But I do like glitter.”
The group decided against widely publicizing the local march beforehand — essentially because organizers weren’t sure of the kind of feedback they would face in their hometown.
“A lot of women who wanted to come couldn’t because they couldn’t find a baby sitter for their children,” Vice said. “They were afraid to bring their children because of the response [the protest] might bring.”
What started with a little more than 15 people grew slightly during their trek from Girard Park to downtown Parc Sans Souci, taking in two additional stragglers who joined the “Keep your Boehner off my body” signs along the way.
“Activism isn’t something we see here,” said Lauren Hebert, 27, an online student of library science at the University of Arizona. “It’s easy to feel isolated here.
ABC News reported on its website that Planned Parenthood already is banned from using federal dollars to fund abortions. The money the House voted to take away is used by Planned Parenthood for “family planning, birth control, medical and preventive services.”
The Planned Parenthood budget amendment is awaiting a vote in the Senate.
Read more on the Planned Parenthood funding cuts and other measures in the bill here.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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Planned Parenthood, like Louisiana Family Forum, Family Research Council, etc., is a NON-GOVERNMENTAL Organization. None of those organizations should be funded with our public federal tax dollars.
With the current federal and state deficits, the U.S. Government and State of Louisiana should immediately end all appropriations of tax dollars to any NGO that has not been directly granted a government contract for its goods and services.
These groups already receive tax-exempt status. The taxpayers should not also be subsidizing their salaries and services. Tell them all to raise their own funding.